Difference between Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism | Major …

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The evolutionary idea contributed proposed by Charles Darwin called Darwinism or Natural selection theory, explaining the mechanism of evolution is clearly stated in his book Origin of species.

The important postulates of the theory are: Over production, Struggle for existence, Variations, Survival of the fittest, and Origin of species.

A few Neo Darwinism Supporters are Romanes, Wallace, Fisher, Huxley, Ford, Haldane, Goldschmidt, Sewall Wright, Ernst Haeckel, August Weismann, Mendel, Dobazhansky , Kettlewell and Herbert Spencer.

The Neo Darwinism has the following ideas: Experimental evidences and Answers to the objections

Darwinism vsNeo-Darwinism

2. It considers all inheritable favourable variation

3. It does not explain the reason for variation

4. In Darwins theory, the basic unit of evolution is an individual

5. It does not consider reproductive isolation as a major factor in new species formation

6. In Darwins theory, natural selection is the survival of the fittest and removal of the unfit ones during the course of time

Neo-Darwinism

1. It is the modification of original concept postulated by Darwin and Wallace based on data obtained from genetic research

2. It considers only inheritable genetic variation (mutations) for evolution

3. It explains the reason for variations

4. In Neo-Darwinism, the basic unit of evolution is a population

5. It consider reproductive isolation as a major essential factor in speciation

6. In Neo-Darwinism, natural selection refers to the differential reproduction leading to the changes in gene frequency

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Difference between Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism | Major ...

The Daily 202: Ayn Rand-acolyte Donald Trump stacks his cabinet with …

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Ayn Rand, the Russian-born American novelist, is seen in Manhattan in 1962. That's Grand Central station behind her. (AP)

THE BIG IDEA:Donald Trump has decided to risk a confirmation fight, officially nominating ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state this morning.Tillerson and Trump had no previous relationship, but the Texas oilman and the New York developer hit it off when they met face to face. One of the things that they have in common is their shared affection for the works of Ayn Rand, the libertarian heroine who celebrated laissez-faire capitalism.

The president-elect said this spring that hes a fan of Rand and identifies with Howard Roark, the main character in The Fountainhead. Roark, played by Gary Cooper in the film adaptation, is an architect who dynamites a housing project he designed because the builders did not precisely follow his blueprints. It relates to business, beauty, life and inner emotions. That book relates to ... everything, Trump told Kirsten Powersfor a piece in USA Today.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cracks a very rare smile as he signs a huge oil exploration deal with Rex Tillerson. (Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti via AP)

-- Tillerson prefers Atlas Shrugged, Rands novel about John Galt secretly organizing a strike of the creative class to hasten the collapse of the bureaucratic society. The CEO listed it as his favorite book in a 2008 feature for Scouting Magazine, according to biographer Steve Coll.

Andy Puzderleaves a meeting with Trump in Bedminster, N.J., last month. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

-- This has now officially become a trend. Trump is turning not just to billionaires but Randians to fill the cabinet:

Andy Puzder, tapped by Trump last week to be secretary of labor, is an avid and outspoken fan of Rands books. One profiler last week asked what he does in his free time, and a friend replied that he reads Ayn Rand. He is the CEO of CKE Restaurants, which is owned by Roark Capital Group, a private equity fund named after Howard Roark. Puzder, who opposes increases in the minimum wage and wants to automate fast food jobs, was quoted just last month saying that he encouraged his six children to read Fountainhead first and Atlas Shrugged later.

Mike Pompeo sits through a hearing on Capitol Hill. (Charles Dharapak/AP)

Mike Pompeo, who will have the now-very-difficult job of directing the Central Intelligence Agency for Trump, has often said that Rands works inspired him. One of the very first serious books I read when I was growing up was Atlas Shrugged, and it really had an impact on me, the Kansas congressman told Human Events in 2011.

Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel arrives with his private security detail at Trump Tower last week. (Kevin Hagen/Getty Images)

-- Trump has been huddling with and consulting several other Rand followers for advice as he fills out his cabinet. John A. Allison IV, for example, met with Trump for about 90 minutes the week before last. As chief executive of BB&T Corp., he distributed copies of Atlas Shrugged to senior officers and influenced BB&Ts charitable arm to fund classes about the moral foundations of capitalism at a number of colleges, the Journal noted in a piece about him. Mr. Allisons worldview was shaped when he was a college student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and stumbled across a collection of essays by Ms. Rand.

Trump Tower (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

-- Ayn Rand was perhaps the leading literary voice in 20th century America for the notion that, in society, there are makers and takers, and that the takers are parasitic moochers who get in the way of the morally-superior innovators. Her books portray the federal government as an evil force, trying to stop hard-working men from accumulating the wealth that she believes they deserve. The author was also an outspoken atheist, something that oozes through in her writing. Rand explained that the essence of objectivism, as she called her ideology, is that man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself.

-- Some of Rands scenes also dont hold up well in a culture thats become more intolerant of sexual assault and skeptical of patriarchy. Roark, the character Trump says he identifies with, rapes a woman in The Fountainhead, for example.

-- For many Republican elites, Rand is someone whose books they read one summer in high school or college and got super excited about but then grew out of once they were exposed to more sophisticated intellectual influences and/or tried to reconcile her world view with the precepts of the Christian faith. (Former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson wrote about this rite of passage in a 2011 column for The Post.)

-- Though many would agree that Christianity and objectivism are incompatible, this is not a consensus view: Theres no contradiction between raising my children in the church, and urging them to lead the kind of lives of achievement, integrity and independence that Ayn Rand celebrated in her novels, Puzder, the incoming labor secretary, argued on the Journal opinion page last month, adding that he also had his kids read C.S. Lewiss Mere Christianity.

-- Remember that scene in Dirty Dancing when Baby tries to get that waiter who knocked up Johnnys dance partner to pay for her abortion? He refuses and instead pulls out a weathered copy of The Fountainhead, urging her to read it. Some people count, and some people dont, he tells her. Jennifer Greys character responds by pouring a pitcher of water on him. In popular culture, the Rand acolytes are that guy.

The fact that all of these men, so late in life, are such fans of works that celebrate individuals who consistently put themselves before others is therefore deeply revealing. They will now run our government.

Paul Ryan speaks very briefly to the press after his meeting with Trump at Trump Tower last week. (AudeGuerrucci/EPA/Pool)

-- Speaker of the House Paul Ryan also used to be an outspoken booster of Rand, but he distanced himselfin order to advance his political ambitions.

In a 2005 speech, Ryan said that Rand was required reading for his office staff and interns. The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand, he told a group called the Atlas Society, according to a New Yorker profile by Ryan Lizza.

By 2012, looking beyond his safely-red House district to the national stage, the Wisconsin congressman claimed that the idea he was inspired by Rand is an urban legend. I reject her philosophy, Ryan told National Review. Its an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a persons view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas AquinasDont give me Ayn Rand!

Stephen Bannon and Jason Miller, the communications director of the Trump transition team, disembark from Trump's plane in Hebron, Ky., earlier this month. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

-- An interesting wrinkle: Stephen Bannon, who will be Trumps chief strategist in the White House, has been sharply critical of Rand. He outlined his world view in a 2014 speech delivered by Skype to a conference held inside the Vatican. In it, he said that there are two strands of capitalism which he finds very disturbing.

One is state-sponsored capitalism. And thats the capitalism you see in China and Russia, he said, according to a transcript posted by BuzzFeed last month. The second form of capitalism that I feel is almost as disturbing is what I call the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism. And, look, Im a big believer in a lot of libertarianism. I have many, many friends that are a very big part of the conservative movement However, that form of capitalism is quite different when you really look at it (compared) to what I call the enlightened capitalism of the Judeo-Christian West. It is a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people, and to use them almost.

-- In 2014, when no one anticipated that Trump would actually go through with running for president, John Olivers HBO show produced a four-minute segment making fun of Rands enduring appeal to so many conservatives and rich people. After sound bites of Rand ripping into Ronald Reagan and explaining why she supports abortion rights, the narrator asks: Why would conservatives hold up as their idol someone who says things like that? Especially when there are so many other advocates for selfishness they could choose, like Donald Trump

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:

Trump's children at the Oct. 9 debate. (Tasos KatopodisAFP/Getty Images)

-- Trump canceled his speech, promised for this week, on how he'll deal with his many conflicts of interest. But last night in a pair of tweets he vowed vaguelyto make "no new deals" while he is in the White House and said he will hand over control of his businesses to his sons before inauguration. Elise Viebeck reports:Trumps tweets gave no indication that he will give up his ownership stake in his global real estate and licensing empire, which experts have advocated as the only way to ensure Trump could not profit from the impact of his own policies. [He also] gave no details on how his businesses would operate without embarking on new business deals, nor how transparency would be provided so the public could judge whether that pledge is being upheld."

Rick Perry arrives at Trump Tower to meet with Trump. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)

-- Trump has settled on Rick Perry to be energy secretary, according to CBS News. He tapped the former Texas governor over a pool of contenders including Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and fundraiser Ray Washburne. Major Garrett has more: Perry sits on two corporate boards - one of them is Energy Transfer Partners - and that may present a confirmation issue. Energy Transfer Partners has a subsidiary known as Dakota Access LLC, which is attempting to build the Dakota Access Pipeline. Recently, the Obama administration blocked the Dakota Access Pipeline easement through Lake Oahe, a move that jeopardized the 1,172-mile underground pipeline. The incoming Trump administration has said it will review the decision. Mr. Trump once invested in Energy Transfer Partners and supports completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline."

Tom Perez speaks on Capitol Hill. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

-- The DNC candidate that Team Obama hoped for: Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said he intends to run for party chairman, throwing his hat in the ring alongside Rep. Keith Ellison, who had emerged as an early favorite in the race. TheNew York Times Jonathan Martinreports:Mr. Perez, who had also been considering a run for Maryland governor, is expected to reveal his plan to seek the D.N.C. chairmanship this week. He has been wooed by prominent Democrats for weeks to seek the party post, a lobbying campaign that included entreaties from high-level allies of Mr. Obama. Mr. Perez, who has been on the phone with a number of Democratic governors and other party leaders, is expected to meet with the president himself to discuss the position this week. Mr. Perezs entry into the race could start a proxy battle between Democrats loyal to the Mr. Obama and those from the more liberal wing of the party represented by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is backing Mr. Ellison, a Minnesota progressive, for party chairman.The new narrative, via the AP: Ellisons star falling as Clinton, Obama allies seek DNC alternative.

A man carries a child with an IV drip as he flees deeper into the remaining rebel-held areas of Aleppo, Syria, yesterday. (Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters)

THE WORLD NEEDS TO PAY ATTENTION TO THIS:

-- Syrian forces, with the help of the Russians, have pushed rebel fighters to the brink in Aleppo, pinning them to just a sliver of remaining territory as they continuetheir push for full control of the northern Syrian city. Aleppos fall would deliver amajor setback to rebel factions, leaving them struggling for ways to keep the anti-Assad rebellion alive without theirterritorial stronghold. The humanitarian crisis continues to worsen. (Louisa Loveluck has more.)

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the U.N. human rights office, said they received reports that government forces have killed at least 82 civilians, sometimes entering homes and killing people on the spot. Jens Laerke, U.N. humanitarian spokesman, said that it looked like a complete meltdown of humanity in Aleppo.

From The Posts Syria reporter:

On Monday night, the phones of most civilians contacted by The Washington Post appeared to have fallen silent, Louisa writes in her latest dispatch. Their fate remains unknown.

From the New York Times's Beirut bureau chief:

Bana Alabed, a seven-year-old girl in Aleppo who has been called the Anne Frank of our era, tweeted that her father was injured shortly before her account went silent:

It is unclear whether Bana or her family survived the blasts:

A teacher and activist recorded his final words as Assads militia closed in. No place now to go now, he says, ducking to hide on a bombed-out street corner. It's the last place."

From a search and rescue volunteer group in the area:

Chaka Fattahexits the federal courthouse after his sentencing hearing in Philadelphia yesterday. (Matt Rourke/AP)

GET SMART FAST:

Rex Tillersontestifies before a House committee in 2010. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

THE TILLERSON ROLLOUT:

--The Trump team is planning an aggressive public relations campaign to win confirmation forTillersonand dispel what it sees as a false narrative about his ties to Russia,"Steven Mufson, Philip Rucker and Karoun Demirjian report: "Former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and James Baker are planning to go public [this morning] with their support for Tillerson, as is former defense secretary Robert Gates. Former vice president Richard B. Cheney also is supportive and may advocate for his confirmation. Gates was the first person to raise Tillerson as a secretary of state possibility. ... Trump did not know much about Tillerson but started chewing over the idea. He invited Tillerson for a meeting and the two global dealmakers hit it off. They recognized similarities in each other, and the more they talked, the more they liked each other."

-- At least four Republican senators have now publicly expressed their concerns with Tillersons Russia ties: Sen. Lindsey Graham called the fact that Putin gave Tillerson the Kremlins Order of Friendship award in 2012 unnerving, while Sen. John McCain questioned Tillersons judgment. I dont see how anybody could be a friend of this old time KGB agent, he said in a CNN interview, referring to Putin. (Marco Rubio criticized Tillerson in a tweet this weekend, and Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said he has a lot of questions about the oil businessman.)

--ChrisCillizzaanalysis: What Trump offered in the course of the campaign was a radical change in the way of doing the business of the American public.That change included and, in many ways, was typified by the sort of people he said he would surround himself with if he were elected. He is, quite literally, making good on a central campaign promise by favoring people like Tillerson. And yet, there is a general sense of shock within the political establishment about the idea that someone with Tillerson's background [was tapped to head the State Department] Much of this consternation is built on the political establishment's inability to fully grasp that the old rules of how things are done in politics are simply not operative with Trump. As he has made clear over and over again, Trump simply see no rules or, if he does see them, he chooses not to acknowledge that he is governed by them."

-- Trumps long-time adviser Roger Stone acknowledged that the secretary of state job was dangled in front of Mitt Romney primarily to torture him for previously opposing the president-elect. During an appearance on InfoWars with Alex Jones, the conspiratorial media outlet that says 9/11 was an inside job and which has become a mouthpiece for the next president (hes appeared on the show), Trumps informal adviser called Romney a choker. Donald Trump was interviewing Mitt Romney for Secretary of State in order to torture him, Stone said. To toy with him! And given the history, thats completely understandable. Mitt Romney crossed a line. He didnt just oppose Trump, which is his democratic right, he called him a phony and a fraud. And a con man. And thats not the kind of man you want as Secretary of State. (Daily Beasts Gideon Resnick)

Vladimir and Rex shake hands at a signing ceremony of an agreement between state-controlled Russian oil company Rosneft and ExxonMobil at the Black Sea port of Tuapse in 2012. (RIA-Novosti/AP)

THERE'S A BEAR IN THE WOODS:

-- The CIA assessment that Russia waged a cyber-campaign to help elect [Trump] is based in part on intelligence suggesting that Moscows hacking efforts were disproportionately aimed at targets tied to the Democratic Party and [Hillary Clinton], Greg Miller and Adam Entous report.U.S. officials said that both parties were repeatedly targeted as part of a months-long cyber-operation linked to Moscow, but that Democratic institutions and operatives came under a more sustained and determined online assault. [They also] said the Republican National Committees computer systems were also probed and possibly penetrated by hackers tied to Russian intelligence services, but that it remains unclear how much material if any was taken from the RNC. U.S. intelligence officials said that the Russian government appears to have succeeded in penetrating computer systems associated with both parties, but prioritized Democratic institutions Other officials familiar with the CIAs assessment said there is high confidence that the RNC was targeted but less certainty that the Russians got inside the committee and stole material.

-- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said his chamber plans to investigate Russias suspected election interference, but he stopped short of calling for a bipartisan select committee to investigate the hack. The Russians are not our friends, McConnell declared at a year-end news conference. This simply cannot be a partisan issue, he said, adding that the Intelligence Committee is more than capable of conducting a complete review of this matter. (Ed O'Keefe and Paul Kane)

-- Paul Ryan also dismissed calls for a special panel, saying that the House Intelligence Committee is already working diligently on the cyber threats posed by foreign governments and terrorist organizations.

-- House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), meanwhile, sent a letter to National Intelligence Director James Clapper demanding answers about why lawmakers werent told about conflicting CIA and FBI reports on Russian hacking before reports on the topic appeared in the press. Karoun Demirjian reports: Nunes took issue with the DNI over some of the details from [reports] accusing the CIA of changing its tune about Russias role in hacking emails from the DNC and Hillary Clintons campaign chairman . Nunes pointed out that Clapper himself had told his committee during an open November hearing that the intelligence community lacked strong evidence connecting Russian government cyber-attacks and WikiLeaks disclosures. He asked Clapper to brief the committee by Friday about the CIA and FBIs latest intelligence of what role Russia played in hacks related to the election, including a coordinated, written assessment of the intelligence communitys current position and update them on the presidents plans to review allegations of Russian hacking.

-- Harry Reid accused Trumps campaign of colluding with WikiLeaks in the months preceding the presidential election. The outgoing Senate Minority Leader saidsomeone in the president-elects orbit was certainly aware of the activity. Someone in the Trump campaign organization was in on the deal. I have no doubt. Now, whether they told [Trump] or not, I dont know. I assume they did. But there is no question about that, Reid told theHuffington Posts Ryan Grim and Sam Stein. So there is collusion there, clearly. ... Dont put blindfolds on. Here is the deal: We have a situation where during the campaign WikiLeaks was heavily involved in trying to hurt Hillary Clinton and it helped Trump. And you have Trump who said he likes Putin better than he likes Obama.

-- Trump pushed back on Twitter:

(All the experts agree that Trump is wrong on this point.)

-- Escalation: Last night on TV, Trump's campaign manager questioned whether the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee (Rep. Adam Schiff) has actually been briefed on Russia's meddling (which he, of course, has). That led to this back-and-forth:

The congressman from Los Angeles engaged:

To which Conway replied:

-- Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta backed a group of Electoral College electors who are asking to receive an intelligence briefing on foreign interventioninto the 2016 election ahead of their December 19 vote. FromCNN: The 10 electors from five states asked James Clapper for information on "whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations." They also asked for "all investigative findings" from the intelligence community on Russia's involvement in the 2016 election. (One of the signatories is Nancy Pelosi's daughter.)

-- Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden writes in a Post op-edabout why it is such a big problem that Trump isalready antagonizing the intelligence community: How does the intelligence community break through and explain itself to the incoming team? Can it convincingly make a case that an evidence-based description of Russian actions is not the same thing as an attack on the legitimacy of the president-elect? Can it explain that, unlike law enforcement that seeks to prove things beyond any reasonable doubt, the purpose of intelligence is to enable meaningful policy and action even in the face of lingering doubt? And can it demonstrate that the incoming administration should want rather than discourage this to better anticipate global trends and adversarial moves in time to reflect and decide on its own actions? As I wrote last month, intelligence should be called on to create the basis, and set the boundaries, for rational policy choices. Thats still true. The odds that it will happen, though, seem a little bleaker after this past week. And we are moving in the wrong direction.

-- Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA, calls Russias interference "the political equivalent of 9/11. The first is, we need to see this for what it is. It is an attack on our very democracy, he said in an interview with The Cipher Brief. Its an attack on who we are as a people. A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life. To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of 9/11. It is huge and the fact that it hasnt gotten more attention from the Obama Administration, Congress, and the mainstream media, is just shocking to me. But whats important to me is, its less important that they had picked the winner and loser, which I thought all along they had done. Whats most important is that they did indeed meddle. I think the implications of that are just absolutely huge

-- We will never know for sure if Russian espionage caused Trump to win, Post columnist and former Bush adviser Michael Gerson writes. With Clinton losing by an 80,000-vote margin in three key states, everything her poor messaging, her consistently bungled response to the email controversy, [James] Comeys untimely letter can be posited as the reason she lost. A hypothetical outcome minus Russian involvement is not just unknown, it is unknowable. [BUT] Trumps blanket attack on the intelligence community for incompetence as though he were still going after Little Marco or Lyin Ted is an insanely dangerous antic that materially undermines American security. Given the extraordinary range of threats faced by the United States a mutual trust between the president and American intelligence services is essential. That relationship has already been seriously damaged.

Goldman Sachs COO Gary Cohn talks on his phone as he waits for the start of a meeting with Trump at Trump Tower. (Evan Vucci/AP)

MORE TRUMP STAFFING DECISIONS:

-- Trump confirmed that he will appoint Goldman Sachs veteran Gary Cohn as director of the National Economic Council, adding another former Wall Street executive to his administration. From CNN Money: Trump, in a statement, said Cohn will design and coordinate his administration's economic policy, working closely with the Treasury and Commerce departments. The post does not require Senate approval. Cohn, a 25-year Goldman Sachs veteran, made at least $123 million in total compensation since becoming the bank's sole president and chief operating officer in 2009 He had been rumored to be a candidate for a number of jobs within the Trump administration, including to head up the powerful Office of Management and Budget."

-- Some of Trumps closest rural advisers are attempting to torpedo efforts to make Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) the next Agriculture secretary, telling him they feel betrayed even at the thought of a Democrat getting the position over a deep bench of Republicans who campaigned on his behalf in rural areas. In the past 48 hours, since Heitkamp was [reported as] the front-runner for the position, leaders of Trumps agricultural advisory committee say theyve been flooded with furious phone calls from influential farmers around the country, and have reached out to the transition team to fight the consideration of Heitkamp, Politicos Ian Kullgren and Catherine Boudreau report. I was blindsided, as was everyone on the Trump agricultural advisory committee whos contacted me, said Gary Baise, a Washington-based lawyer who helped the Trump campaign build a network of rural supporters. The anger is personal [and] Trumps rural allies say tapping Heitkamp would be a slap in the face to farm-state Republicans who stuck by the real estate mogul through the darkest days of his campaign.

-- Michigan Republican Party leader Ronna Romney, niece to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, is said to be Trump's pick for RNC chair. CNN reports that an announcement is expected as soon as this week.

-- Kellyanne Conway said she will not serve as Trumps press secretary, telling radio host Hugh Hewitt in a radio interview that she turned down the high-profile White House gig. "I have politely declined that job," she said. "I think it's an incredibly important position to fill." She has floated the possibility of working outside Trumps administration to steer a network of political organizations supporting the president-elect and his agenda.

-- Trump has begun to shift his focus from the cabinet to White House senior staff.Politicos Shane Goldmacher reports that some jobs are now seen as near-locks:

-- The press is bulking up to cover Trump, as well: Fox News announced that John Roberts will be its White House correspondent, an important role because of the network's influence and how much time Trump spends watching cable. Both The Post and the New York Times also announced yesterday that they will devote six reporters full-time to the White House beat, more than when Obama took office.(Erik Wemple)

Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions waves to reporters after meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Nov. 30. (Gary Cameron/Reuters)

-- The Boston Globes Annie Linskey exploresthe episode that brought Jeff Sessions and Trump together for the first time: The year was 2005, and Sessions was astonished by a sensational news report: A project to overhaul the United Nations headquarters in New York would cost more than $1 billion. He was just as stunned that a celebrity New York developer quoted in the article claimed it could be done for about half the cost. Suddenly the junior senator from Alabama took an interest in the New York billionaire. Mr. Trump is very outraged! Sessions informed his colleagues in an April floor speech that year. This would lead to a high-profile Senate hearing that, at Sessionss request, featured Trump as the star witness

Indeed, the July 2005 hearing was classic Trump: Some straight talk laced with braggadocio. The developer boasted about his nearby property, he bragged about his smarts negotiating with New York contractors (whom he called major slime), and railed against a decision by the UN to hire an Italian design firm to do the work. I love Italy. I love the Italians. How do you hire an Italian architect? Trump said. What happens? Every time he wants to check the building, he gets on a plane and flies for 8 hours, and he goes to the New York City Building Department and he does not even speak English? I mean it is ridiculous. Sessions loved it. Mr. Trump is a breath of fresh air for this Senate, Sessions said at the time. The UN ended up completing the project, about three years late and costing nearly $400 million more than its budget, even though the scope of the project was reduced vastly.

Flashback: What Ted Kennedy said during Sessionss last confirmation hearing before the Judiciary committee: He was rejected by the Senate judiciary panel in 1986 for a federal judgeship at the behest of opponents including Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy, who were both members of the panel. Kennedy, the Massachusetts senator, pilloried Sessions for indicting three well-known black civil rights leaders on counts of voter fraud. They were later cleared of the charges. Mr. Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era which I know both black and white Americans thought was in our past, Kennedy said in the March 1986 hearing. He is, I believe, a disgrace to the Justice Department and he should withdraw his nomination.

Richard Nixon campaigns in Missouri in 1968. (AP)

-- THE NEW NIXON? Trumps speech at the Republican National Convention was inspired by and modeled after Richard Nixons 1968 speech. Now Trump is going to hang a reminder of Nixon in the Oval Office. Politico has sources saying that Trump has told multiple people he plans to prominently display a 1987 letter that the former president, who resigned in scandal, sent him. Dear Donald, it reads, I did not see the program, but Mrs. Nixon told me that you were great on the Donahue Show. As you can imagine, she is an expert on politics and she predicts that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner!

Detectives are investigating a vandalism and theft that happened at a Silver Spring home in the 200 block of Williamsburg Drive. It is among numerous incidents of reported hate graffiti throughout Montgomery County, and in the schools, in recent weeks. (Montgomery County Police Department)

AMERICAIS DIVIDED, AND THE ALT-RIGHT IS ASCENDANT:

-- When tyranny takes hold, by The New Yorker's Evan Osnos: What is the precise moment, in the life of a country, when tyranny takes hold? It rarely happens in an instant; it arrives like twilight, and, at first, the eyes adjust. Tyranny does not begin with violence; it begins with the first gesture of collaboration ... Its most enduring crime is drawing decent men and women into its siege of the truth.

-- Montgomery County educators report a massive spike in hate graffiti since Trumps victory. In the past month, officials said, theyve found more on-campus drawings of swastikas and other racist insults then they encountered during an entire one-year span in 2015. (Donna St. George)

-- The grotesque slurs and threats that Jewish political journalists face has only increased since the election. The AP's Lisa Lerer shared this one last night:

-- When even Frosted Flakes are political, where does that leave us as a country? by Monica Hesse: Everything is political these days. Every single decision. Five weeks after the end of a bitter presidential election, it hasnt ended at all: Its merely reached a new phase in which the things we buy are seen as surrogates for the people we voted for. Consider: A new app, Boycott Trump, allows users to weed out businesses that have even loose ties to [Trumps] empire. Boycott Trump has a counterpart in the conservative American Family Associations Naughty or Nice list, which offers shopping guidance based on which retailers are Merry Christmas-friendly. Avoid PetSmart, the list suggests. Choose Banana Republic over the Gap. Setting aside whether these boycotts are effective in terms of sales one wonders whether they are effective in terms of our national future. In this fractured, limping mess of a country, whose inhabitants are struggling to not punch one anothers lights out, much less to have a civil conversation if we cant even eat the same cereal, then where does that leave us?"

Cecile Richards, the head of Planned Parenthood, joins Hillary Clinton on stage after the Democratic candidate spoke to supporters of the group in June. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

-- Planned Parenthood fears it may be first casualty of rekindled abortion war, by Sandhya Somashekhar and Katie Zezima: Planned Parenthood officials are scrambling to prepare for the likelihood that Congress next year will cut off more than a half-billion dollars in federal funding to the group, fulfilling the wishes of abortion foes who are planning an aggressive push to roll back abortion rights under [Trump]. Officials with the 100-year-old womens health nonprofit organization are leaning on donors, new and old, and preparing to lobby friendly lawmakers at the state and local level to stem some of the loss. They have started gaming out which communities might be able to withstand a loss of services. They are asking supporters to get their medical care at Planned Parenthood clinics to increase the proportion of privately insured patients. The federal dollars to Planned Parenthood make up more than 40 percent of its budget. Such a loss, Planned Parenthood officials say, would force them to close many programs and turn away many of the 2.5 million patients their clinics see annually."

Harry and Terri Welch talk to the Postafter their son, Edgar Maddison Welch, was arrested in a "pizzagate" shooting in D.C.(Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

-- The parents of pizzagate gunman Edgar Maddison Welch said they were stunned by the news that their son had driven to Washington and opened fire at a D.C. pizzeria, and they believe he may be showing signs of PTSD after a car crash he was involved in earlier this year. My heart just stopped and stomach just dropped, Terri Welch said in an interview with The Posts Keith L. Alexander and Susan Svrluga, recalling the moment she found out her son had been arrested. They also said they noticed a change in Welchs personality after he hit and injured a 13-year-old boy on his way to work earlier this year. Maddison, who hopes to be an EMT, stayed with the teen until help arrived and worried a lot about long-term effects for the child, they said. He was very traumatized. We feel that accident changed him, Harry Welch said, adding that his usually outgoing and energetic son became melancholy and quiet.

A man takes a selfie in front of placard with a picture of Melania Trump in her hometown of Sevnica, Slovenia. The banner reads, "Welcome in hometown of first lady of U.S." (Srdjan Zivulovic/Reuters)

--MelaniaTrump appeared in a Maryland courtroom on Monday for a status hearing in her defamation case against a Montgomery County blogger and a British tabloid.Mrs. Trump was not required to attend the court conference but chose to do so to meet the judge, meet opposing counsel and show her commitment to the case, said her attorney, Charles Harder, adding that she looks forward to seeing the case to a successful conclusion. The case stems from false assertions that she had once worked as a high-end escort. (Dan Morse)

The Obamas pose for a family portrait on Easter. (Pete Souza/The White House/Getty)

OBAMA'S LEGACY -- THREE GREAT WAPO STORIES ON THE FIRST FAMILY:

-- The Obamas came from a place we all came from, byWil Haygood: If, at times, the everyday presence of a black American family in the nations mind-set has seemed to unleash forces both good and not so good, there are some things that will resonate and be spoken of for generations to come: A black father as president walked his girls hand-in-hand across the lawn of the most powerful address in the world. A black mother gazed at that tableau and took herself back to the stories of beaten-down slaves who once tilled the White House lawns where her husband and daughters loped As Barack, Michelle, Sasha and Malia Obama depart the White House, it is worth looking back at their visage. What did it mean to have a black family, for eight years, astride the political and cultural colossus of American society? How much did the African in African American resonate? President Obamas post-presidency plans are bountiful. But his prayed-for attention to black America will be robust In a nation that has never had a candid conversation about race unlike South Africa after apartheid, with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission he will find himself expected to play the role of shaman, poet, conciliator and statesman.

-- How Michelle Obama became a singular American voice, by Peter Slevin: Obamas ascendance as mother, mentor, leader and critic carries many meanings in American culture, particularly as an African American woman For all the grief Michelle Obama took from critics who conjured radicalism, grievance or, bizarrely, racism from her finely tuned remarks, her messages were fundamentally timeless and conservative. More than anything, she used the strength of her own Chicago-to-Princeton-to-the-White-House narrative to urge kids to believe in themselves and never quit. In reaching the most rarefied of tables, she figured she had four years, maybe eight, to make something happen, to move the needle, as she put it. As the media made a fuss over a new hairstyle, she once explained how she saw the role of first lady: We take our bangs and we stand in front of important things that the world needs to see. And, eventually, people stop looking at the bangs and they start looking at what were standing in front of.

Obama, Biden and Claire Duncan, Arne Duncan's daughter, watch a tennis match at Camp David in 2010. (White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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The Daily 202: Ayn Rand-acolyte Donald Trump stacks his cabinet with ...

Ayn Rand’s Progressive Readers are Misguided | National Review

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A lot of CEOs have terrible taste in literature, and some of them like Ayn Rand a great deal. A few of those are true-believing libertarians and theres the odd nutty Objectivist, but many people are attracted to Rand not because of her politics but because they have heroic conceptions of themselves and thrill to Rands heroic aesthetic.

Theres just something about executives and celebrities. Mark Cuban is a fan of The Fountainhead, and Angelina Jolie sings the praises of Atlas Shrugged. Eva Mendes is an admirer of Barack Obamas, but she says she wont date a man who isnt a Rand fan. Billie Jean King isnt what youd call an arch conservative, but shes a Rand fan. It might be related to working in dramatically competitive enterprises.

Where you dont meet a lot of Randians is in the conservative world. Theyre out there if you go looking: A fellow from one of the Rand groups (the factions divide and subdivide, being essentially Protestant in spite of their atheism) once approached me at a gathering and began haranguing me about Whittaker Chamberss 1957 review of Atlas Shrugged in National Review. (That sort of thing is what professional libertarians substitute for sexual intercourse.) I wasnt born until a few decades after that was published, and didnt start working at National Review for several decades more (William F. Buckley Jr. inexplicably did not take me up on my offer to come work for him when I was a teenager), but the fine art of bearing a grudge has not been lost. Not on the Randians.

Bring up your undying love of Atlas Shrugged at the typical conservative gathering and people will smile at you and try very hard not to roll their eyes. Some people think of her novels as a kind of guilty adolescent enthusiasm now grown out-of-date, an intellectual mullet, a stage one goes through between the ages of 14 and 20. Some people use Atlas Shrugged as a totem it had a moment at the cresting of the Tea Party phenomenon. But it is rare to meet actual adult human beings who organize their politics views (or, for pitys sake, their lives) around Ayn Rand and her views. I dont think National Review has a single Randian in the house; Id be surprised if the Weekly Standard did, and if one showed up at Commentary then John Podhoretz would simply mock him out of existence.

Strangely, our progressive friends insist that the Right is entirely in thrall to the ideas of Ayn Rand. Left-leaning writers in places such as New York and Washington tend to be culturally insular parochial, even and many of them do not know very many conservatives. I cannot tell you how many times I have met some well-meaning lefty who tells me (thinking it is a compliment!) that I do not seem like one of those people. A young woman once insisted that, as a conservative, I simply must hate homosexuals. At the time, I was living in TriBeCa and working as a theater critic, which is not a very good gay-evasion strategy. People know what they know.

But I dont think that Jonathan Chait insists that conservatives are intellectual hostages to Ayn Rand because he doesnt know better; hes just intellectually dishonest.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who once said that reading Rand is what got him into politics, is usually trotted out as Exhibit A in the case of the closet Randian. But Paul Ryan is not a Randian. Paul Ryan is a Roman Catholic Crossfit bro. (He has been officially categorized as a non-believer by the Ayn Rand Institute.) There isnt anything particularly Randian about his politics. And, contrary to the cartoon version, he and his allies are not anti-government as such. They believe that our current government is too large, too expensive, and too intrusive. There are many people who believe that, and they are not Rand cultists. They are ordinary people who pay taxes and stand in line at the drivers-license office.

The Left tries to create a false dilemma that opposes progressivism to Rand-ism or what they imagine to be Rand-ism, a blend of authentically Randian moralizing about moochers and takers with a kind of Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism, an atomistic society that denies community and despises the philanthropic impulse. Actual conservatives are more likely to be found in church, where, among other things, they exercise the philanthropic impulse in community.

Chait is worried that Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trumps nominee for secretary of state, once named Atlas Shrugged his favorite book. He says so under the headline How Ayn Rands theories destroyed Never Trump conservatism, and the essay is a work of truly acrobatic stupidity. I dont think that the worrisome thing about Rex Tillerson is that he doesnt have better taste in literature than Rob Lowe.

Strange that a Randian cabal would take Donald Trump as its mascot. Trump, an incompetent casino operator and hotelier who boasted of buying political favors, is practically a Rand villain. He even has the name for it.

Perhaps that is not what is happening.

I myself am not much of a Rand admirer. I think Atlas Shrugged is a better novel than The Grapes of Wrath, but The Grapes of Wrath is a terrible novel. Say this for the old bat, though: It is difficult to imagine a modern writer in the English-speaking world having a cultural footprint so large that an entire stream of American politics might be (wrongly and stupidly) attributed to his thinking.

I happen to be in New York City while writing this, surrounded by a whos-who of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. I dont expect to meet any Randians. But Ill let you know if I do.

Kevin D. Williamson is National Reviews roving correspondent.

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Ayn Rand's Progressive Readers are Misguided | National Review

How Ayn Rands theories destroyed Never Trump conservatism

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Who is Donald Trump?Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

During the Republican presidential primary, the conservative columnist and talk-show host Ross Kaminsky, like many members of the right-wing intelligentsia, looked at Donald Trump with horror and dismay. Not only was the front-runner a near-certain loser with dubious loyalty to the party agenda, but he was something far more disturbing, an authoritarian bully, even arguably a fascist. One need not violate Godwins Law to recognize that theres something deeply troubling about a leading presidential candidate having no objection to his supporters roughing up a vocal dissenter, he wrote, bemoaning the noxious blend of bile and tripe that emerges, as so much political vomitus, from his big and always-moving mouth. Kaminsky identified Trumps campaign as being about bullying and xenophobia, and the man himself as not quite ready to be president of Delta Tau Chi, and warned Republicans thinking of voting for him anyway that they could never explain such a choice to their children.

As the authoritarian bully prepares to assume control of the powers of the presidency, Kamnisky has not exactly disavowed these previous sentiments as he has moved on to an even more serious threat to the health of the Republic: namely, the tax and regulatory policies of the Obama administration. Kaminskys latest column carries the headline, Trump Election Saves Us From the Evil Party. Evil a word that appears 13 more times in his column applies to such policies as Dodd-Frank, environmental regulations, and the partial expiration of the Bush tax cuts. This, not Trumps pee-wee strongman act, represented the more serious threat to liberty, justifying an alliance with a figure as noxious as Trump.

An honorable handful of conservative opponents of Trump have maintained their opposition since his election. The vast majority have returned to the party fold. The path taken by many of them has focused on the alleged hypocrisy or excess of Trumps liberal critics. Now that the man considered by many conservative intellectuals as a peril to democracy itself has assumed the most powerful position on the planet, once staunchly anti-Trump conservatives like Charles C.W. Cooke, Oren Cass, or David French (who so fervently opposed Trump that he considered running against him for president) find themselves preoccupied with what they see as liberal hysteria against him. As Trump himself gleefully noted, Never Trump conservatives are on a respirator now. Theyre almost gone.

The Never Trump movement, like the vast majority of the political elite, yours truly included, pegged Trump from the outset as a surefire loser. When they refused to support his candidacy after he locked up the nomination in the spring, they anticipated a period of exile from mainstream Republican politics lasting most of the year, followed by a return to the fold, where they would wage a contest for the soul of the party, bolstered by the I-told-you-so evidence of Trumps crushing defeat. Few of them bargained for a period of exile that would last four years, or eight, or perhaps even longer. Professional and personal incentives dictate a retreat back to the safety of the herd via mockery of the pro- and anti-Trump rights shared enemy.

But to dismiss the Never Trumpers mass surrender as nothing but mere cowardice or expediency is to miss the dead-serious ideas undergirding their behavior. To liberals, it may sound baffling and incomprehensible that ordinary political arguments about taxes and regulation could outweigh his authoritarianism. Liberals generally see economic policy as a normal disagreement, apart from and subordinate to larger questions about democracy and structure of government.

Most conservatives, however, do not see these issues this way. The conservative movement treats small government as a first-order question of liberty, alongside or even above political liberty. Liberals treat economic policy on pragmatic grounds the point of Medicaid is to help poor people get health care, and the point of the Clean Air Act is to create more breathable air. Expanding government is the means toward those discrete ends. Conservatives have discrete goals, like economic growth, but also larger ideological ones. As Milton Friedman once put it, freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself to a believer in freedom. While it may seem strange to liberals, for economic conservatives, the fight to slash down the size of government is itself tantamount to a fight against authoritarianism.

Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist William McGurn sneers at liberals who have raised alarms over Trumps authoritarian tendencies. Whats striking here is that the same folks who see in Mr. Trump a Mussolini in waiting are blind to the soft despotism that has already taken root in our government, he writes. This is the unelected and increasingly assertive class that populates our federal bureaucracies and substitutes rule by regulation for the rule of law. McGurn goes on to cite such injustices as the Environmental Protection Agencys wetlands laws or the departments deliberate attempt to destroy the market for coal and the Labor Departments overtime rule.

A liberal would consider McGurns suggestion, that theyre hypocritical to support wetlands preservation while opposing a strongman-president, insane. From McGurns standpoint, it makes perfect sense. McGurn isnt coming out and defending Trumps habitual praise for dictators who crush their opposition, or his calls to imprison his political opponents. He simply sees the struggle for liberty as being of a piece, and the governments eagerness to eliminate business regulations and taxes on the rich suggests to him that freedom on the whole is moving forward.

The most uncompromising theorist of this philosophy is, of course, Ayn Rand. And while Rand had many beliefs, the core of her vision is that politics consists of a class struggle between makers and takers. This is inverted Marxism politics pitting a virtuous class of producers against a parasite class that exploits the wealth they create, the difference being that Rand saw the makers as the capitalists and the takers as the workers. (The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time, explained her character, John Galt. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains.) Also like the Marxists, her vision of a free society depended not on the strength of liberal institutions like fair elections and a free press but the triumph of the hero class.

Marxists have no important role in politics at the national level, but Randians do. Rex Tillerson, Trumps nominee for secretary of State, has listed her tome Atlas Shrugged as his favorite book. Andy Puzder, Trumps secretary of Labor nominee, has said the same. Trump has called himself a fan of Rands work, though it is fair to question whether he has actually made it through books of such length. Of course, Paul Ryan is a longtime devotee who once called Rand the reason he got into public service.

None of these figures is an Objectivist (the name for followers of Rands cultlike philosophy). They have, however, absorbed its central message of politics as a class war to liberate the makers from the takers. Shortly after the election, the president of the Atlas Society, a pro-Rand group, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed making the case for Randians like Paul Ryan to embrace her vision even if they didnt share all its idiosyncratic details, ending with this rousing conclusion: As John Galt says in the closing lines of Atlas Shrugged: The road is cleared. It is up to us, believers and nonbelievers, to take up her message and spread the news.

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How Ayn Rands theories destroyed Never Trump conservatism

Media, morality and the neighbors cow: When did Ayn Rand become the …

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If you have any doubts that the phenomenon of Donald Trump was a long time acoming, you have only to read a piece that Gore Vidal wrote for Esquire magazine in July 1961, when the conservative movement was just beginning and even Barry Goldwater was hardly a glint in Republicans eyes.

Vidals target was Paul Ryans idol and the idol of so many modern conservatives: the trash novelist and crackpot philosopher Ayn Rand, whom Vidal quotes thusly:

It was the morality of altruism that undercut America and is now destroying her.

Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequence of freedom or the primordial morality of altruism with its consequences of slavery, etc.

To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.

The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral

In most quarters, in 1961, this stuff would have been regarded as nearly sociopathic nonsense, but, as Vidal noted, Rand was already gaining adherents: She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who hate the welfare state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts.

Because he was writing at a time when there was still such a thing as right-wing guilt, Vidal couldnt possibly have foreseen what would happen: Ayn Rand became the guiding spirit of the governing party of the United States. Her values are the values of that party. Vidal couldnt have foreseen it because he still saw Christianity as a kind of ineluctable force in America, particularly among small-town conservatives, and because Rands philosophy couldnt have been more anti-Christian. But, then, Vidal couldnt have thought so many Christians would abandon Jesus teachings so quickly for Rands. Hearts hardened.

The transformation and corruption of Americas moral values didnt happen in the shadows. It happened in plain sight. The Republican Party has been the party of selfishness and the party of punishment for decades now, trashing the basic precepts not only of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but also of humanity generally.

Vidal again: That it is right to help someone less fortunate is an idea that has figured in most systems of conduct since the beginning of the race. It is, one could argue, what makes us human. The opposing idea, Rands idea, that the less fortunate should be left to suffer, is what endangers our humanity now. I have previously written in this space how conservatism dismantled the concept of truth so it could fill the void with untruth. I called it an epistemological revolution. But conservatism also has dismantled traditional morality so it could fill that void. I call that a moral revolution.

To identify whats wrong with conservatism and Republicanism and now with so much of America as we are about to enter the Trump era you dont need high-blown theories or deep sociological analysis or surveys. The answer is as simple as it is sad: There is no kindness in them.

That the draining of kindness from huge swaths of the country occurred with so little resistance is, in large measure, the fault of the media. The media have long prided themselves on being value neutral. It was Dragnet journalism: Just the facts, maam. Or: We report, you decide a slogan coopted by the right-wing Fox News, ironically to underscore that they werent biased, at least not liberally biased.

Of course, not even the most scrupulous journalists were ever really value neutral. Underneath their ostensible objectivity there was a value default an unstated moral consensus, which is the one Vidal cited and the one to which most Americans subscribed throughout most of our history. But it took a lot to activate those values in the press. The mainstream white media moved ever so slowly to report on the evils of segregation. Yet when they finally did, they didnt behave as if African-Americans marching for their rights and Sheriff Bull Connor siccing dogs on them were moral equals. Value neutrality had its limits. The reporting of the movement was one of journalisms proudest moments, and you can read about it in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Race Beat by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanonff. It is a story worth telling and remembering in these frightening days a story that shows how the press can serve us.

However long it took for them to grow a conscience, those journalists who covered the civil rights movement didnt think they were violating their professional code of objectivity by exposing the heinous conduct of the Southern authorities, because they knew what they were upholding wasnt subject to debate. The morality was stark. (I have a suspicion from the way the Black Lives Matter movement is covered that it wouldnt be so stark today.)

Taking sides against the KKK and redneck sheriffs, however, was one thing, as was taking sides against lunatic fringe right-wingers like the John Birch Society who hated government. But what happens when those extremists who advocate a bizarre morality that elevates selfishness and deplores altruism commandeer one of our two major political parties? What do you do then?

We know the answer. You do nothing.

The media sat by idly while American values were transmogrified. Even the so-called good conservatives David Brooks, David Frum, Michael Gerson, Jennifer Rubin, et al. refused to speak the language of kindness, preferring the language of free markets. As far right conservatives took over the Republican Party the very same conservatives who just a few years earlier were considered crazies the media dared not question Republican opposition to anything that assisted the disempowered and dispossessed, which is how a value-neutral media wound up serving the cause of conservatism and Republicanism and how the moral consensus was allowed to be turned upside down.

Read those Ayn Rand quotes to your children as moral instruction, and you will see how far we have fallen. This is Republican morality. This is Trump morality. And the media, loath to defend traditional American values in an increasingly hostile conservative environment, let it happen. That is what value neutrality will get you.

Of course I realize there are those who believe a value-neutral press is actually a bulwark against excess, in part because they have seen the alternative. Right-wing and even left-wing media have their own values, and they have no qualms about disregarding fact or truth in pursuing their agendas. Seen this way, values dont inform journalism; they distort it. Moreover, skeptics will say that everyone has his/her own values and that a journalism that pretends otherwise threatens to create informational and even moral chaos. As my late father, an accountant, used to say, Figures dont lie, but liars do figure. Do we really want to trust the media to figure?

It is true that we dont all share the exact same values, though in the past I think our fundamental values were pretty close to one anothers. But even if values differ, all values are not created equal. Some are better than others. Most of us do know what is right. Most of us do know that we have moral obligations to others. Most of us understand kindness. It is just that we have been encouraged to forget it. That was Ayn Rands mission. Trump is proof of how well she and her acolytes, like Paul Ryan, succeeded.

This election turned on many things, but one that both the public and the press have been hesitant to acknowledge is the election as a moral referendum: the old morality against the new Randian one Republicans had advanced for years and Trump fully legitimized. There is no kindness in him. We prefer the idea that Trump voters were economic casualties, that they were frustrated with the system, that they felt marginalized and misunderstood. It lets us avoid seeming condescending.

Perhaps. But I think it behooves us to recognize that many of those voters bristled under the old morality and turned to Trump because he removed the guilt Vidal had cited when we tried to harden our hearts. Shame helped keep the old morality in force. Trump made shamelessness acceptable. We are reaping that whirlwind every day.

I dont know whether a great society can survive without kindness. Unfortunately, we shall have a chance to see. In the meantime, those of us who believe in traditional morality must mount what I would call a kindness offensive. We must redouble our kindness in our daily lives, fight for it, promote it and eventually build a political movement around it.

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness and truth, Tolstoy said. Going forward, that could be the basis for a politics. And we must press our media to understand that they can only restore the values they once took for granted by doing what the best of them did during the civil rights era: observe events through a moral lens. Appealing to our worst selves is usually a winning strategy, as it was for Trump. The media must remind us of what it means to be our best selves. This should be their new mission: a media in opposition. It should be unrelenting, regardless of the right-wing blowback.

America is in moral crisis. Many Americans seem far more interested in making sure that those they consider undeserving basically, the poor get nothing than in making sure that they themselves get something. A friend recently told me a joke told him by a Hungarian acquaintance, who intended it as an example of Hungarian schadenfreude, but I have modified it because I think it is a harrowing parable for contemporary America and its strange moral turnabout. This is Trumps America.

There were three farmers: a German, a Hungarian and an American. Each had a cow. One day, misfortune befell them, and their cows died. Each remonstrated against God, saying God had failed him, and each lost faith. God realized he had to do something to make amends. So he came to Earth and approached the German.

What can I do to restore your faith? He asked. And the German answered, God, I lost my cow. Please give me another cow. And God did so.

What can I do to restore your faith? He asked the Hungarian. And the Hungarian answered, God, I lost my cow. Please give me that cow and another to compensate. And God did so.

And finally God came to the American, and He asked, What can I do to restore your faith? And the American answered, God, I lost my cow. Shoot my neighbors cow.

Republicans brought us here with the assistance of a passive media. Whether we can bring ourselves back is the new existential question. Until then, we are shooting our neighbors cow.

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Media, morality and the neighbors cow: When did Ayn Rand become the ...

Ethical Issues In Advanced Artificial Intelligence

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The ethical issues related to the possible future creation of machines with general intellectual capabilities far outstripping those of humans are quite distinct from any ethical problems arising in current automation and information systems. Such superintelligence would not be just another technological development; it would be the most important invention ever made, and would lead to explosive progress in all scientific and technological fields, as the superintelligence would conduct research with superhuman efficiency. To the extent that ethics is a cognitive pursuit, a superintelligence could also easily surpass humans in the quality of its moral thinking. However, it would be up to the designers of the superintelligence to specify its original motivations. Since the superintelligence may become unstoppably powerful because of its intellectual superiority and the technologies it could develop, it is crucial that it be provided with human-friendly motivations. This paper surveys some of the unique ethical issues in creating superintelligence, and discusses what motivations we ought to give a superintelligence, and introduces some cost-benefit considerations relating to whether the development of superintelligent machines ought to be accelerated or retarded.

KEYWORDS: Artificial intelligence, ethics, uploading, superintelligence, global security, cost-benefit analysis

1. INTRODUCTION

A superintelligence is any intellect that is vastly outperforms the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom, and social skills.[1] This definition leaves open how the superintelligence is implemented it could be in a digital computer, an ensemble of networked computers, cultured cortical tissue, or something else.

On this definition, Deep Blue is not a superintelligence, since it is only smart within one narrow domain (chess), and even there it is not vastly superior to the best humans. Entities such as corporations or the scientific community are not superintelligences either. Although they can perform a number of intellectual feats of which no individual human is capable, they are not sufficiently integrated to count as intellects, and there are many fields in which they perform much worse than single humans. For example, you cannot have a real-time conversation with the scientific community.

While the possibility of domain-specific superintelligences is also worth exploring, this paper focuses on issues arising from the prospect of general superintelligence. Space constraints prevent us from attempting anything comprehensive or detailed. A cartoonish sketch of a few selected ideas is the most we can aim for in the following few pages.

Several authors have argued that there is a substantial chance that superintelligence may be created within a few decades, perhaps as a result of growing hardware performance and increased ability to implement algorithms and architectures similar to those used by human brains.[2] It might turn out to take much longer, but there seems currently to be no good ground for assigning a negligible probability to the hypothesis that superintelligence will be created within the lifespan of some people alive today. Given the enormity of the consequences of superintelligence, it would make sense to give this prospect some serious consideration even if one thought that there were only a small probability of it happening any time soon.

2. SUPERINTELLIGENCE IS DIFFERENT

A prerequisite for having a meaningful discussion of superintelligence is the realization that superintelligence is not just another technology, another tool that will add incrementally to human capabilities. Superintelligence is radically different. This point bears emphasizing, for anthropomorphizing superintelligence is a most fecund source of misconceptions.

Let us consider some of the unusual aspects of the creation of superintelligence:

Superintelligence may be the last invention humans ever need to make.

Given a superintelligences intellectual superiority, it would be much better at doing scientific research and technological development than any human, and possibly better even than all humans taken together. One immediate consequence of this fact is that:

Technological progress in all other fields will be accelerated by the arrival of advanced artificial intelligence.

It is likely that any technology that we can currently foresee will be speedily developed by the first superintelligence, no doubt along with many other technologies of which we are as yet clueless. The foreseeable technologies that a superintelligence is likely to develop include mature molecular manufacturing, whose applications are wide-ranging:[3]

a) very powerful computers

b) advanced weaponry, probably capable of safely disarming a nuclear power

c) space travel and von Neumann probes (self-reproducing interstellar probes)

d) elimination of aging and disease

e) fine-grained control of human mood, emotion, and motivation

f) uploading (neural or sub-neural scanning of a particular brain and implementation of the same algorithmic structures on a computer in a way that perseveres memory and personality)

g) reanimation of cryonics patients

h) fully realistic virtual reality

Superintelligence will lead to more advanced superintelligence.

This results both from the improved hardware that a superintelligence could create, and also from improvements it could make to its own source code.

Artificial minds can be easily copied.

Since artificial intelligences are software, they can easily and quickly be copied, so long as there is hardware available to store them. The same holds for human uploads. Hardware aside, the marginal cost of creating an additional copy of an upload or an artificial intelligence after the first one has been built is near zero. Artificial minds could therefore quickly come to exist in great numbers, although it is possible that efficiency would favor concentrating computational resources in a single super-intellect.

Emergence of superintelligence may be sudden.

It appears much harder to get from where we are now to human-level artificial intelligence than to get from there to superintelligence. While it may thus take quite a while before we get superintelligence, the final stage may happen swiftly. That is, the transition from a state where we have a roughly human-level artificial intelligence to a state where we have full-blown superintelligence, with revolutionary applications, may be very rapid, perhaps a matter of days rather than years. This possibility of a sudden emergence of superintelligence is referred to as the singularity hypothesis.[4]

Artificial intellects are potentially autonomous agents.

A superintelligence should not necessarily be conceptualized as a mere tool. While specialized superintelligences that can think only about a restricted set of problems may be feasible, general superintelligence would be capable of independent initiative and of making its own plans, and may therefore be more appropriately thought of as an autonomous agent.

Artificial intellects need not have humanlike motives.

Human are rarely willing slaves, but there is nothing implausible about the idea of a superintelligence having as its supergoal to serve humanity or some particular human, with no desire whatsoever to revolt or to liberate itself. It also seems perfectly possible to have a superintelligence whose sole goal is something completely arbitrary, such as to manufacture as many paperclips as possible, and who would resist with all its might any attempt to alter this goal. For better or worse, artificial intellects need not share our human motivational tendencies.

Artificial intellects may not have humanlike psyches.

The cognitive architecture of an artificial intellect may also be quite unlike that of humans. Artificial intellects may find it easy to guard against some kinds of human error and bias, while at the same time being at increased risk of other kinds of mistake that not even the most hapless human would make. Subjectively, the inner conscious life of an artificial intellect, if it has one, may also be quite different from ours.

For all of these reasons, one should be wary of assuming that the emergence of superintelligence can be predicted by extrapolating the history of other technological breakthroughs, or that the nature and behaviors of artificial intellects would necessarily resemble those of human or other animal minds.

3. SUPERINTELLIGENT MORAL THINKING

To the extent that ethics is a cognitive pursuit, a superintelligence could do it better than human thinkers. This means that questions about ethics, in so far as they have correct answers that can be arrived at by reasoning and weighting up of evidence, could be more accurately answered by a superintelligence than by humans. The same holds for questions of policy and long-term planning; when it comes to understanding which policies would lead to which results, and which means would be most effective in attaining given aims, a superintelligence would outperform humans.

There are therefore many questions that we would not need to answer ourselves if we had or were about to get superintelligence; we could delegate many investigations and decisions to the superintelligence. For example, if we are uncertain how to evaluate possible outcomes, we could ask the superintelligence to estimate how we would have evaluated these outcomes if we had thought about them for a very long time, deliberated carefully, had had more memory and better intelligence, and so forth. When formulating a goal for the superintelligence, it would not always be necessary to give a detailed, explicit definition of this goal. We could enlist the superintelligence to help us determine the real intention of our request, thus decreasing the risk that infelicitous wording or confusion about what we want to achieve would lead to outcomes that we would disapprove of in retrospect.

4. IMPORTANCE OF INITIAL MOTIVATIONS

The option to defer many decisions to the superintelligence does not mean that we can afford to be complacent in how we construct the superintelligence. On the contrary, the setting up of initial conditions, and in particular the selection of a top-level goal for the superintelligence, is of the utmost importance. Our entire future may hinge on how we solve these problems.

Both because of its superior planning ability and because of the technologies it could develop, it is plausible to suppose that the first superintelligence would be very powerful. Quite possibly, it would be unrivalled: it would be able to bring about almost any possible outcome and to thwart any attempt to prevent the implementation of its top goal. It could kill off all other agents, persuade them to change their behavior, or block their attempts at interference. Even a fettered superintelligence that was running on an isolated computer, able to interact with the rest of the world only via text interface, might be able to break out of its confinement by persuading its handlers to release it. There is even some preliminary experimental evidence that this would be the case.[5]

It seems that the best way to ensure that a superintelligence will have a beneficial impact on the world is to endow it with philanthropic values. Its top goal should be friendliness.[6] How exactly friendliness should be understood and how it should be implemented, and how the amity should be apportioned between different people and nonhuman creatures is a matter that merits further consideration. I would argue that at least all humans, and probably many other sentient creatures on earth should get a significant share in the superintelligences beneficence. If the benefits that the superintelligence could bestow are enormously vast, then it may be less important to haggle over the detailed distribution pattern and more important to seek to ensure that everybody gets at least some significant share, since on this supposition, even a tiny share would be enough to guarantee a very long and very good life. One risk that must be guarded against is that those who develop the superintelligence would not make it generically philanthropic but would instead give it the more limited goal of serving only some small group, such as its own creators or those who commissioned it.

If a superintelligence starts out with a friendly top goal, however, then it can be relied on to stay friendly, or at least not to deliberately rid itself of its friendliness. This point is elementary. A friend who seeks to transform himself into somebody who wants to hurt you, is not your friend. A true friend, one who really cares about you, also seeks the continuation of his caring for you. Or to put it in a different way, if your top goal is X, and if you think that by changing yourself into someone who instead wants Y you would make it less likely that X will be achieved, then you will not rationally transform yourself into someone who wants Y. The set of options at each point in time is evaluated on the basis of their consequences for realization of the goals held at that time, and generally it will be irrational to deliberately change ones own top goal, since that would make it less likely that the current goals will be attained.

In humans, with our complicated evolved mental ecology of state-dependent competing drives, desires, plans, and ideals, there is often no obvious way to identify what our top goal is; we might not even have one. So for us, the above reasoning need not apply. But a superintelligence may be structured differently. If a superintelligence has a definite, declarative goal-structure with a clearly identified top goal, then the above argument applies. And this is a good reason for us to build the superintelligence with such an explicit motivational architecture.

5. SHOULD DEVELOPMENT BE DELAYED OR ACCELERATED?

It is hard to think of any problem that a superintelligence could not either solve or at least help us solve. Disease, poverty, environmental destruction, unnecessary suffering of all kinds: these are things that a superintelligence equipped with advanced nanotechnology would be capable of eliminating. Additionally, a superintelligence could give us indefinite lifespan, either by stopping and reversing the aging process through the use of nanomedicine[7], or by offering us the option to upload ourselves. A superintelligence could also create opportunities for us to vastly increase our own intellectual and emotional capabilities, and it could assist us in creating a highly appealing experiential world in which we could live lives devoted to in joyful game-playing, relating to each other, experiencing, personal growth, and to living closer to our ideals.

The risks in developing superintelligence include the risk of failure to give it the supergoal of philanthropy. One way in which this could happen is that the creators of the superintelligence decide to build it so that it serves only this select group of humans, rather than humanity in general. Another way for it to happen is that a well-meaning team of programmers make a big mistake in designing its goal system. This could result, to return to the earlier example, in a superintelligence whose top goal is the manufacturing of paperclips, with the consequence that it starts transforming first all of earth and then increasing portions of space into paperclip manufacturing facilities. More subtly, it could result in a superintelligence realizing a state of affairs that we might now judge as desirable but which in fact turns out to be a false utopia, in which things essential to human flourishing have been irreversibly lost. We need to be careful about what we wish for from a superintelligence, because we might get it.

One consideration that should be taken into account when deciding whether to promote the development of superintelligence is that if superintelligence is feasible, it will likely be developed sooner or later. Therefore, we will probably one day have to take the gamble of superintelligence no matter what. But once in existence, a superintelligence could help us reduce or eliminate other existential risks[8], such as the risk that advanced nanotechnology will be used by humans in warfare or terrorism, a serious threat to the long-term survival of intelligent life on earth. If we get to superintelligence first, we may avoid this risk from nanotechnology and many others. If, on the other hand, we get nanotechnology first, we will have to face both the risks from nanotechnology and, if these risks are survived, also the risks from superintelligence. The overall risk seems to be minimized by implementing superintelligence, with great care, as soon as possible.

REFERENCES

Bostrom, N. (1998). "How Long Before Superintelligence?" International Journal of Futures Studies, 2. http://www.nickbostrom.com/superintelligence.html

Bostrom, N. (2002). "Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards." Journal of Evolution and Technology, 9. http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html

Drexler, K. E. Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology. (Anchor Books: New York, 1986). http://www.foresight.org/EOC/index.html

Freitas Jr., R. A. Nanomedicine, Volume 1: Basic Capabilities. (Landes Bioscience: Georgetown, TX, 1999). http://www.nanomedicine.com

Hanson, R., et al. (1998). "A Critical Discussion of Vinge's Singularity Concept." Extropy Online. http://www.extropy.org/eo/articles/vi.html

Kurzweil, R. The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. (Viking: New York, 1999).

Moravec, H. Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. (Oxford University Press: New York, 1999).

Vinge, V. (1993). "The Coming Technological Singularity." Whole Earth Review, Winter issue.

Yudkowsky, E. (2002). "The AI Box Experiment." Webpage. http://sysopmind.com/essays/aibox.html

Yudkowsky, E. (2003). Creating Friendly AI 1.0. http://www.singinst.org/CFAI/index.html

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Ethical Issues In Advanced Artificial Intelligence

Buy Noopept Powder | View Noopept Reviews and Benefits

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Noopept Powder is a popular nootropic compound with reported cognitive benefits. Noopept is similar to the racetam family of nootropics in mechanism and effect, but it doesnt have the same pyrrolidine structure and is considered to be much more potent--up to 1,000 times more according to some research.

Noopept Powder reportedly offers one of the most potent, effective, and fast-acting nootropics currently available. Noopept Powder is known to interact with glutamatergic system, modifying receptors to become more sensitive to glutamate, which plays a key role in cognitive processes such as memory formation and focus.

Because of its effect on the glutamatergic system, Noopept uses are focused on cognitive functioning and brain health. Noopept may have the following benefits:

In addition to these cognitive and psychological benefits, Noopept may also promote brain health by protecting neurons, improving communication between synapses, and even combating oxidative stress in the brain.

Product contains a jar of Noopept powderin 5g or 10g.

For information, seeExamine's articleon Noopept.

You may also be interested in Noopept Capsules or our Basic Nootropic Capsules Sample Pack.

Attention: All chemical compounds have risks. Please consult your physician, and understand the available research, before consumption. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. It has not been approved, nor have these statements been evaluated, by the FDA.

Learn more by reading Noopept reviews below.

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KUKA Robotics | KUKA AG

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KUKA industrial robots are the key factor in achieving higher productivity and greater profitability. They improve the quality of the products and reduce the requirement for costly materials and limited energy resources.

At KUKA Robotics, our vision is to establish the industrial robot as an intelligent assistant to humans during manufacturing: humans and robots work hand in hand, ideally complementing each other with their respective skills. This also makes it possible for small and medium-sized companies to deploy robots cost-effectively.

KUKA Robotics supplies industrial robots which are perfectly tailored to your application. From the actual robot itself and the controller all the way to the appropriate software: customers from a diverse range of industries benefit from innovative technologies and sophisticated engineering.

KUKA Robotics can offer you the following product spectrum:

We also supply controllers, software and a broad range of services, for example customer support, training courses at KUKA College or engineering.Our solutions are implemented in the following industries in particular:

Find out about the other divisions of KUKA: KUKA Systems, KUKA Industries and Swisslog.

KUKA Robotics is the North American headquarters of KUKA Roboter GmbH. The Shelby Township, MI location is home to KUKA Robotics USA-based sales, applications, project engineering, service, parts, training and administrative staff, plus North American business leadership personnel.

Half of the building is dedicated to hands-on experiences with the latest robotics technologies, products, and training. Stocks of robots and parts are also on-hand to meet ever increasing pressure for fast delivery.

KUKA Robotics core competencies include the development, production, and sale of industrial robots, controllers, software, linear units, and omniMove omni-directional motion platforms.

KUKA robots are utilized in a diverse range of industries including the appliance, automotive, aerospace, consumer goods, logistics, food, pharmaceutical, medical, foundry and plastics industries as well as multiple applications including material handling, machine loading, assembly, packaging, palletizing, welding, bending, joining, and surface finishing.

Our industrial robots can be used in a wide variety of applications. Find out about our extensive range of products and solutions now.

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KUKA Robotics | KUKA AG

Robotics Academy

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Carnegie Mellons Robotics Academystudies how teachers use robots in classrooms to teach Computer Science, Science, Technology Engineering, and Mathematics (CS-STEM). Our mission is to use the motivational effects of robotics to excite students about science and technology. The Robotics Academy fulfills it mission by developing research based solution for teachers that foreground CS-STEM and are classroom tested. Robotics Academy inspired papers and publications can be found here:

http://education.rec.ri.cmu.edu/educators/research/

Carnegie Mellons Robotic Academy staff and development team are housed in the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC), where robots for business, government, and industry are designed, prototyped, and tested just outside our office doors.

http://cs2n.org/teachers/ccrc

The CCRC projects goal is to integrate more computational thinking into robotics classrooms. CMRA has seen that many schools robotic classrooms started because the school became involved with a robotics competition. Many robotic competitions consist of a set of mechanically challenging activities and dont require sophisticated programming solutions for teams to be successful. This project builds on the existing robotics competition infrastructure and then extends these activities in ways that foreground computational thinking.

http://cs2n.org/teachers/cer

Robotics provide a great opportunity to introduce students to computer science. Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh develops, tests, and refines a Theory of Robotic Programming Badges that can be applied to Computer Science Education. This project builds on lessons learned as CMRA built the Computer Science Student Network and integrates a complete badge system in Robot Virtual Worlds. The project measures the ability of badges to motivate student learning, to be accurate indicators of student performance, and if the badges are easily understood by students.

For years we have heard that teachers are using robotics to teach mathematics. This project studied existing (2008) robotics education pedagogy and then developed multiple strategies that foregrounded proportional reasoning, a big idea in mathematics, that can be taught using robots. CMRA developed multiple tools that can help teachers foreground mathematics using robots:

Abstraction Bridges Link

Robots in Motion Link

Expedition Atlantis Game Link

Expedition Atlantis Teachers Guide PDF Content

Robot Virtual World Measurement Toolkit MP4 Video

and many written papers Link

Mathematics is an enabler of all future innovation and CMRA continues to look for innovative ways to foreground mathematics in all of its activities.

http://www.cs2n.org

The Computer Science Student Network (CS2N) started as a collaborative research project between Carnegie Mellon University and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) designed to increase the number of students pursuing advanced Computer Science and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (CS-STEM) degrees. CS2N has morphed into an online portal where students and teachers can find activities, competitions, and training designed to help them learn basic programming.

http://www.education.rec.ri.cmu.edu/robots/corridor/index.htm

The Robotics Corridor Project was a collaboration between Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, Butler County Community College, California University of Pennsylvania, Robert Morris University, Westmoreland County Community College, the Community College of Beaver County, the Community College of Allegheny College, and regional industry partners designed to determine the skill sets that a highly qualified technician would need to work in the robotics and automation industries. This partnership helped establish training, certifications, and associate degrees at the partner schools.

The Robotics Academy is a world leader in robotics education and trains teacher internationally. To learn more about our online, face to face, or onsite training please select this link:

http://education.rec.ri.cmu.edu/educators/professional-development/

The Robotics Academys qualified trainers can come to your site and offer classes for groups of teachers. The cost is $4000 plus expenses for up to 12 students for three days of classes. More than 12 students require a second trainer and increase the cost to $2000/day plus expenses. Total expenses are calculated prior to confirming the teaching dates.

You supply the training room, computers and robots (or robot kits) for the students as well as necessary utilities. In planning for necessary computers and robots, note that students are generally grouped in twos. Call412 681-7160for more information.

The Robotics Academy is pleased to share the following new curricular tools with you.

Introduction to Programming VEX IQ

The Introduction to Programming the VEX IQ Curriculum features lesson for the VEX IQ Microcontroller; the curriculums focus is to teach beginning programmers how to program using ROBOTCs graphical programming environment. All of the challenges in the curriculum have are available in the Robot Virtual World simulation environment.

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VEX Cortex Video Trainer w/ ROBOTC

The VEX Cortex Video Trainer is a multimedia-rich curriculum featuring lessons for the VEX Cortex Microcontroller; the curriculums focus is to teach how to program, but it also includes multi-faceted engineering challenges, step-by-step videos, and robotics engineering teacher support materials. Themajority of the challenge found in the Cortex Video trainer have been simulated in the Robot Virtual World Curriculum Companion.

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ROBOTC Graphical Introduction to Programming LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3

The Introduction to Programming the EV3 Curriculum is a curriculum module designed to teachcore computer programming logic and reasoning skills using a robotics context. The curriculumconsists of three chapters (Basic Movement, Sensors, and Program Flow) and each chapteris broken into units that teach key robotics and programming concepts. Additionally, there isa huge amount of support for teachers competing in Robotics Competitions for the first timeincluded in the teachers guide!

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Introduction to Programming LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3

The Introduction to Programming EV3 Curriculum is a curriculum module designedto teach core computer programming logic and reasoning skills using a roboticsengineering context. It contains a sequence of 10 projects (plus one capstonechallenge) organized around key robotics and programming concepts.

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Robot Virtual Worlds enable students to program virtual robots using the same code that they use on the physical classroom robots.

Robot Virtual Worlds

No Robot, No Problem! Robot Virtual Worlds is a high-end simulation environment that enables students, without robots, to learn programming. Research has shown that learning to program in RVW is more efficient than learning to program using physical robots. RVW simulates popular real world LEGO robots in 3D environments and allows you to program them using the same languages as physical robots. The RVW environment is perfect for home, classroom, and competition environments!

More Information:www.RobotVirtualWorlds.comwww.robomatter.com

Expedition Atlantis

Its the year 2023 and Atlantis has been discovered deep in the ocean, off of the coast of Africa. A team of elite scientists and engineers have been sent to investigate the underwater ruins, and youre one of them! Use your skills to to maneuver the teams underwater vehicles in this expedition to Atlantis!

This is a great GAME that will teach kids the math behind robot movement.

Learn More

Virtual Brick

GEA offers summer camps, weekend, and after school programs rooted in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), including the Lego WeDo Robotics, Programming with Scratch, Video Game Design, Lego EV3 Robotics, and Coding with RobotC. Find out more at:

http://www.greeneacademy.net/

Sarah Heinz House is an organization, aimed to provide children and teens with powerful role models and a safe, fun place to go after school, on weekends and during the summer. Find out more at:

http://www.sarahheinzhouse.org/summer-camps/

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Robotics Academy

Quotes About Spirituality (5807 quotes)

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For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness. Hermann Hesse, Bume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

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Quotes About Spirituality (5807 quotes)

Phys.org – News and Articles on Science and Technology

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Can bird feeders do more harm than good?

Many bird lovers put out feeders full of seed for their feathered friendsbut those feeders may also attract predators that eat eggs and nestlings. The researchers behind a new study in The Condor: Ornithological Applications ...

How do seabirds share habitat when food is limited? In the case of frigatebirds, size differences drive them to seek different prey. A study in The Auk: Ornithological Advances uses new technology to explore how closely related ...

Birds prefer to migrate at nightso much so that if day breaks while they're over water, they'll turn back toward the nearest shore rather than pressing on. That's the key finding of a new study in The Auk: Ornithological ...

It was the middle of the night when the villagers sounded the alarm: a huge Sumatran elephant was raiding their rice fields, and they needed urgent help to drive it back to the forest.

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The CEOs of AT&T and Time Warner are heading to Capitol Hill in a bid to convince senators that a merger of their two companies will mean innovative new experiences for consumers.

Apple has blamed "external physical damage" for causing a handful of iPhones to explode or catch fire in China and insisted that its handsets posed no safety problem.

A strong earthquake rocked Indonesia's Aceh province early Wednesday, killing nearly 100 people and sparking a frantic rescue effort in the rubble of dozens of collapsed and damaged buildings.

When an unprecedented heatwave hit South Australia state, home to the world-renowned Barossa Valley winemaking region, viticulturists fretted about the impact on their grapes.

Medical device maker Medtronic has been fined $17 million by Chinese anti-monopoly regulators in the latest effort by Beijing to force down what it sees as unreasonably high prices.

The long-term threat of getting a pink slip is giving some older workers the blues.

Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, who met with President-elect Donald Trump and then announced plans to create 50,000 jobs and invest $50 billion in U.S. startups, has been one of Japan's most aggressive overseas investors ...

An island of ice and lava battered by the Arctic winds, Iceland's dramatic and pristine landscape is attracting a growing number of tourists, not all of whom are respectful of the fragile ecosystem.

Hundreds of commercial airline pilots currently flying may be clinically depressed, according to an anonymous survey of nearly 1,850 pilots conducted by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Nearly a quarter of attempted suicides at metro stations could be identified using real-time CCTV to spot certain behaviours for prevention, according to new research published in the open access journal BMC Public Health. ...

Antibodies drawn from a patient infected with Zika could form the basis of a vaccine against the notorious virus, a new animal study suggests.

Though it has been shown that men who get melanoma are twice as likely to die from the disease as women, the biological explanation for this is poorly understood. Research led by Dr. Alan Spatz, Director of Surgical and Molecular ...

If you're thinking about taking up running as your New Year's resolution and still need some convincing, consider this: MRI scans reveal that endurance runners' brains have greater functional connectivity than the brains ...

Listening to metaphors involving arms or legs loops in a region of the brain responsible for visual perception of those body parts, scientists have discovered.

Investigators at Johns Hopkins report they have new evidence that a bacterium known to cause chronic inflammatory gum infections also triggers the inflammatory "autoimmune" response characteristic of chronic, joint-destroying ...

New research from the University of Birmingham shows that antibody levels in saliva are linked to those in blood serum, suggesting a new method for assessment of protection against bacterial infections.

Breast cancer cells that carry a certain gene mutation can be induced to die using a combination of an existing targeted therapy along with an investigational molecule tested by Duke Cancer Institute researchers.

Even before tumors develop, breast cancer cells with a few defined molecular alterations can spread to organs, remain quiet for long periods of time, and then awaken to form aggressive, deadly breast cancer metastasis, says ...

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have made a major breakthrough that allows people to control a robotic arm using only their minds. The research has the potential to help millions of people who are paralyzed or ...

Scientists from the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University Health Network, have developed the first functional pacemaker cells from human stem cells, paving the way for alternate, biological pacemaker therapy.

The ability to deceive someone by telling the truth is not only possible, it has a namepalteringit's common in negotiations and those who palter can do serious harm to their reputations, according to research published ...

A woman in London has become the first to give birth after having her fertility restored using ovarian tissue frozen before the onset of puberty, doctors said Wednesday.

Pop culture icons can influence our fashion choices, dietary habits and brand preferences, but can celebrities also influence our medical decisions?

Researchers at The University of Queensland's Queensland Brain Institute have found a link between vitamin D deficiency in pregnancy and increased autism traits.

(HealthDay)Stroke and atrial fibrillation (AF) recurrence are low one year after AF ablation, according to a study published online Dec. 9 in the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology.

Judges in the United States tend to give defendants longer sentences the day after switching to daylight saving time compared with other days of the year, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal ...

(HealthDay)Staffing the intensive care unit (ICU) with a communication facilitator is economically feasible, according to research published in the December issue of the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

Barrow Neurological Institute and IBM Watson Health today announced results of a revolutionary study that has identified new genes linked to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The discovery ...

We're all familiar with white fata bit too familiar, perhaps. White fat is the stuff bulging around our waists and thighs, the result of too little exercise and too much fast food. Today, with more than one-third of American ...

A new study published today in BMJ Open has found a link between obesity in adolescents and their risk of developing heart disease in early adulthood, regardless of ethnicity.

A biologist at The University of Texas at Dallas and his colleagues have discovered that two enzymes previously linked independently with keeping cancer cells alive actually work in tandem to spur tumor growth.

(HealthDay)Definitive chemoradiation (CRT) can potentially cure HIV-associated squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal (SCCAC), with the addition of cetuximab resulting in less locoregional failure (LRF), according to ...

(HealthDay)Liver transplantation (LT) patients should undergo addiction consultation to accurately detect alcohol consumption, according to a study published online Dec. 9 in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

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Seychelles Beach Resort – Wyndham Vacation Rentals

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Escape to the natural beauty of Seychelles Beach Resort. Fronting 200 feet of beautiful gulf-front terrain, this gorgeous high-rise resort condominium rises 22 stories above the sparkling sugar-white sands and emerald green waters, offering spectacular views of the Gulf of Mexico. Featuring elegant 1- and 2-bedroom, 2-bath units, all residences boast ceramic tile in the foyer, hall, kitchen and bathrooms, two full baths with cultured marble vanity tops, washer/dryer and spacious balconies. Seychelles is conveniently located within walking distance of St. Andrews State Park and only moments from the Marina, where you can enjoy excursions to Shell Island. Convenient to the area's best dining, nightlife, water park, zoo, deep sea fishing, sailing, diving, snorkeling and other area attractions. Experience the joy of this wonderful island-style retreat!

Check-in: 5115 Gulf Drive, Panama City Beach, FL 32408 Local Phone: (850) 236-9550

The property has the following accessibility features. For additional information regarding any other accessibility features, please call (888) 909-6807

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Seychelles Beach Resort - Wyndham Vacation Rentals

Caribbean Sea | sea, Atlantic Ocean | Britannica.com

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Alternative Title: Antillean-Caribbean Sea

Caribbean Sea, suboceanic basin of the western Atlantic Ocean, lying between latitudes 9 and 22 N and longitudes 89 and 60 W. It is approximately 1,063,000 square miles (2,753,000 square km) in extent. To the south it is bounded by the coasts of Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama; to the west by Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and the Yucatn Peninsula of Mexico; to the north by the Greater Antilles islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico; and to the east by the north-south chain of the Lesser Antilles, consisting of the island arc that extends from the Virgin Islands in the northeast to Trinidad, off the Venezuelan coast, in the southeast. Within the boundaries of the Caribbean itself, Jamaica, to the south of Cuba, is the largest of a number of islands.

Together with the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea has been erroneously termed the American Mediterranean, owing to the fact that, like the Mediterranean Sea, it is located between two continental landmasses. In neither hydrology nor climate, however, does the Caribbean resemble the Mediterranean. The preferred oceanographic term for the Caribbean is the Antillean-Caribbean Sea, which, together with the Gulf of Mexico, forms the Central American Sea. The Caribbeans greatest known depth is Cayman Trench (Bartlett Deep) between Cuba and Jamaica, approximately 25,216 feet (7,686 metres) below sea level.

The geologic age of the Caribbean is not known with certainty. As part of the Central American Sea, it is presumed to have been connected with the Mediterranean during Paleozoic times (i.e., about 541 to 252 million years ago) and then gradually to have separated from it as the Atlantic Ocean was formed. The ancient sediments overlying the seafloor of the Caribbean, as well as of the Gulf of Mexico, are about a half mile (about one kilometre) in thickness, with the upper strata representing sediments from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras (from about 252 million years ago to the present) and the lower strata presumably representing sediments of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras (from about 541 to 66 million years ago). Three phases of sedimentation have been identified. During the first and second phases the basin was free of deformation. The Central American Sea apparently became separated from the Atlantic before the end of the first phase. Near the end of the second phase, gentle warping and faulting occurred, forming the Aves and Beata ridges. Forces producing the Panamanian isthmus and the Antillean arc were vertical, resulting in no ultimate horizontal movement. The sediment beds tend to arch in the middle of the basins and to dip as landmasses are approached. The younger Cenozoic beds (formed during the last 65 million years) are generally horizontal, having been laid down after the deformations occurred. Connections were established with the Pacific Ocean during the Cretaceous Period (from about 145 to 66 million years ago) but were broken when the land bridges that permitted mammals to cross between North and South America were formed in the Miocene and Pliocene epochs (about 23 to 2.6 million years ago).

The existing sediment cover of the seabed consists of red clay in the deep basins and trenches, globigerina ooze (a calcareous marine deposit) on the rises, and pteropod ooze on the ridges and continental slopes. Clay minerals appear to have been washed down by the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, as well as by the Magdalena River in Colombia. Coral reefs fringe most of the islands.

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The Caribbean Sea is divided into five submarine basins, each roughly elliptical in shape, which are separated from one another by submerged ridges and rises. These are the Yucatn, Cayman, Colombian, Venezuelan, and Grenada basins. The northernmost of these, the Yucatn Basin, is separated from the Gulf of Mexico by the Yucatn Channel, which runs between Cuba and the Yucatn Peninsula and has a sill depth (i.e., the depth of the submarine ridge between basins) of about 5,250 feet (1,600 metres). The Cayman Basin, to the south, is partially separated from the Yucatn Basin by Cayman Ridge, an incomplete fingerlike ridge that extends from the southern part of Cuba toward Guatemala, rising above the surface at one point to form the Cayman Islands. The Nicaraguan Rise, a wide triangular ridge with a sill depth of about 4,000 feet (1,200 metres), extends from Honduras and Nicaragua to Hispaniola, bearing the island of Jamaica and separating the Cayman Basin from the Colombian Basin. The Colombian Basin is partly separated from the Venezuelan Basin by the Beata Ridge. The basins are connected by the submerged Aruba Gap at depths greater than 13,000 feet (4,000 metres). The Aves Ridge, incomplete at its southern extremity, separates the Venezuelan Basin from the small Grenada Basin, which is bounded to the east by the Antillean arc of islands.

Subsurface water enters the Caribbean Sea across two sills. These sills are located below the Anegada Passage, which runs between the Virgin Islands and the Lesser Antilles, and the Windward Passage, which stretches between Cuba and Hispaniola. The sill depth of Anegada Passage is between 6,400 and 7,700 feet (1,950 and 2,350 metres), whereas that of the Windward Passage is between 5,250 and 5,350 feet (1,600 and 1,630 metres).

North Atlantic deep water enters the Caribbean beneath the Windward Passage and is characterized by its rich oxygen content and by a salinity of slightly less than 35 parts per thousand. From there it divides to fill the Yucatn, Cayman, and Colombian basins at depths near 6,500 feet (2,000 metres). This Caribbean bottom water also enters the Venezuelan Basin, thus introducing high-oxygen water at depths of 5,900 to 9,800 feet (1,800 to 3,000 metres). Subantarctic intermediate water (i.e., water differing in several characteristics from the surface and bottom layers of water that it separates) enters the Caribbean below the Anegada Passage at depths of 1,600 to 3,300 feet (500 to 1,000 metres). Above this water, the subtropical undercurrent and surface water enter. The shallow sill depths of the Antillean arc block the entry of Antarctic bottom water, so that the bottom temperature of the Caribbean Sea is close to 39 F (4 C), as compared with the Atlantic bottom temperature of less than 36 F (2 C).

Surface currents, bearing both high- and low-salinity water depending on the source, enter the Caribbean mainly through the channels and passages of the southern Antilles. These waters are then forced by the trade winds through the narrow Yucatn Channel into the Gulf of Mexico. The wind-driven surface water accumulates in the Yucatn Basin and the Gulf of Mexico, where it results in a higher average sea level than in the Atlantic, forming a hydrostatic head that is believed to constitute the main driving force of the Gulf Stream. Of the water passing through the Yucatn Channel each second, only about one-fourth represents the deeper Subantarctic intermediate water. The remainder is the surface water that passed over the Antillean arc at depths of less than 2,600 feet (800 metres).

The climate of the Caribbean generally is tropical, but there are great local variations, depending on mountain elevation, water currents, and the trade winds. Rainfall varies from about 10 inches (25 cm) per year on the island of Bonaire off the coast of Venezuela to some 350 inches (900 cm) annually in parts of Dominica. The northeast trade winds dominate the region with an average velocity of 10 to 20 miles (16 to 32 km) per hour. Tropical storms reaching a hurricane velocity of more than 75 miles (120 km) per hour are seasonally common in the northern Caribbean as well as in the Gulf of Mexico; they are almost nonexistent in the far south. The hurricane season is from June to November, but hurricanes occur most frequently in September. The yearly average is about eight such storms. The Caribbean has fewer hurricanes than either the western Pacific (where these storms are called typhoons) or the Gulf of Mexico. Most hurricanes form in the eastern Atlantic near the Cape Verde Islands and follow the path of the trade winds into the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, although the exact path of any hurricane is unpredictable. In 1963 one of the deadliest hurricanes on record, Flora, caused the loss of more than 7,000 lives and extensive property damage in the Caribbean alone. Such storms also have been a major cause of crop failure in the region.

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While the vegetation of the Caribbean region is generally tropical, variations in topography, soils, rainfall, humidity, and soil nutrients have made it diverse. The porous limestone terraces of the islands are generally nutrient-poor. Near the seashore, black and red mangroves form dense forests around lagoons and estuaries, and coconut palms typify the sandy vegetation of the littoral. Both the Central American region and the Antillean islands are on the routes of birds migrating to or from North America, so that large seasonal variations occur in the bird populations. Parrots, bananaquits, and toucans are typical resident Caribbean birds, while frigate birds, boobies, and tropic birds can be seen over the open ocean.

The shallow-water marine fauna and flora of the Caribbean centres around the submerged fringing coral reefs, which support diverse assemblages of fishes and other forms of marine life. The marine biota is derived from the Indian and western Pacific oceans via the Panamanic Seaway, which was closed by the rise of the Isthmus of Panama some four million years ago. Coral reef growth throughout the Antillean region is favoured by uniformly warm temperatures, clear water, and little change in salinity. Submerged fields of turtle grass are found in the lagoons on the leeward sides of reefs. Sea turtles of several species, the manatee, and the manta (devil) ray (Manta birostris) are also characteristic of the region. The spiny lobster is harvested throughout the Caribbean and is sold mainly to restaurants and tourist hotels, while the queen conch and reef fishes are local staples.

Fishes of commerce are sardines from Yucatn and species of tuna. Among common game fish are the bonefishes of the Bahamian reefs, barracuda, dolphin, marlin, and wahoo.

Since the signing of the Law of the Sea Treaty in the early 1980s, no part of the Caribbean remains outside the extended mineral, fishing, and territorial zones of the seas bordering countries. Explosive human population growth and the overexploitation of marine resources in the region have stimulated international initiatives toward managing and preserving the environment. The Convention for the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment of the Wider Caribbean Region (Cartegena Convention) was adopted officially by about half of the countries of the Caribbean in 1983, but its measures have since been implemented more broadly across the Caribbean community. The Cartegena Convention calls for its signatories to provideindividually and jointlyprotection, development, and management of the common waters of the wider Caribbean. Three protocols have been developed and launched under the framework of the convention: cooperation on combating oil spills (1983); establishment of specially protected areas and wildlife (1990); and prevention, reduction, and control of land-based marine pollution (1999).

Tourism is an important part of the Caribbean economy, serving primarily the populations of the United States and Canada to the north and Brazil and Argentina to the south. Connections by air and sea between the Caribbean and North America are generally more developed than are interisland connections. With its typically sunny climate and recreational resources, the Caribbean has become one of the worlds principal winter vacation resort areas.

The Caribbean has a complex pattern of trade and communications. The volume of trade per capita is high, but most of this trade is conducted with countries outside the region. Each Caribbean country tends to trade with countries elsewhere that share a common language. Cuba, an exception, trades with a variety of countries, trade with former communist-bloc countries accounting for much of the total. Intra-Caribbean trade is small, owing to limited industrial resources and the monocultural economic pattern. Goods and commodities exchanged within the Caribbean economy are relatively fewrice from Guyana; lumber from Belize; refined petroleum from Trinidad and Curaao; salt, fertilizer, vegetable oils, and fats from the eastern islands; and a few manufactured products. A lack of capital and limited natural resources generally have discouraged industrial development, although low labour costs and tax incentives have attracted some industry. Markets for most Caribbean products are in the United States and Canada, which import bananas, sugar, coffee, bauxite, rum, and oil. All Atlantic-Pacific shipping via the Panama Canal passes through the Caribbean.

The first European to enter the Caribbean Sea was Christopher Columbus, who made landfall in the Bahamas in 1492 convinced that he had discovered a new route to Asia. He continued south to found a key Spanish colony on the island of Hispaniola (now divided politically between Haiti and the Dominican Republic). In his subsequent three voyages, Columbus discovered the major features of the region.

The study of Caribbean natural history began with observations published by early voyagers, notably those of the English buccaneer and explorer William Dampier in the late 17th century. The British Challenger Expedition briefly passed through the Caribbean in 1873, followed by more-extensive American expeditions (187789) on the Blake. Danish and American expeditions from 1913 to the late 1930s initiated the systematic research of the basin that has continued to the present day, with periodic expeditions mounted by various countries.

The invention of scuba equipment, the development of research submarines, and the establishment of marine research laboratories in a number of countries in the Caribbean region led to a rapid increase in the level of scientific activity in the second half of the 20th century. One of the more-recent areas of research has focused on coral "bleaching" events, including those in 1995 and 1998 off the coast of Belize (on the largest coral barrier reef in the Northern Hemisphere) and in 2005 on the reefs near Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Coral bleaching occurs when the animals that constitute the reef expel associated algae in response to changes in water chemistry (temperature, salinity, acidity, or increases in silt or pollution). The process ultimately kills those animals. One of the leading hypotheses for this phenomenon has been that Caribbean waters have increased in temperature, perhaps as a result of global climate change.

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NATO flag

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949.

The organization constitutes a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are located in Haren, Brussels, Belgium.

Decades of economic and political turbulence across member states have left NATO weakened, and facing a strategic paradigm shift. With CSAT political and military influence dominating from the Pacific to the Mediterranean, NATO seeks to consolidate their diminished forces around traditional strongholds. As tensions continue to grow in the east, a US-led joint NATO-AAF peacekeeping force stationed on Stratis - Task Force Aegis - is in the middle of a staged draw-down.

NATO forces consisting of elements from the Army of the Czech Republic and German Kommando Spezialkrafte were sent to Takistan to assist the US Army.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) makes up of Arma 3s "western" forces, including many elements from the US Army and multi-national unit called CTRG.

NATO forces are sent to Tanoa in that same year.

US Army and British UKSF soldiers are very similarly equipped, as part of an international effort to standardize NATO equipment. Both sub-factions use Carrier Rigs (Crye Armor Chassis), ECH helmets, and are equipped with MX series service rifles. US Army units wear MTP Combat Fatigues (Crye G2 pants and combat shirts, Ringers gloves, as well as Lowa boots), while British UKSF wear similar uniforms with a Triangular Dazzle pattern. US Army gear is often brown or green with numerous variations, while British UKSF wear coyote-brown vests and headgear sprayed over with snakeskin.

The MX 6.5 mm, designed by CMMG, Inc. chambers the 6.5x39 mm non-case round. The MX series rifle is standard issue for NATO forces, and comes in 4 versions: a standard rifle (with an optional underslung 3GL), a carbine for non-combat personnel such as officers and vehicle crew, a squad automatic rifle, and a marksman rifle. The P07 is the standard sidearm for NATO units. The MXM 6.5 mm is used as a NATO marksman rifle, alongside the Mk18 7.62 marksman rifle.

NATO forces use the Hunter as a standard ground utility vehicle. It is a medium sized MRAP made for multipurpose use and comes in unarmed, RCWS HMG, and RCWS GMG variants. The HEMTT is an 8-wheeled truck used for multi-purpose roles such as troop and cargo transport. Special operations and utility units use quadbikes for general transport and other roles.

For combat the M2A1 Slammer (Licensed copy of the Israeli Merkava MBT) functions as NATO's Main Battle Tank for ground combat operations in the region. The AMV-7 Marshallis used as an amphibious APC for ground troops, in addition to the IFV-6c Panther(Licensed copy of the Israeli Namer IFV)Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The IFV-6a Cheetah serves as self propelled anti-air support, while the M4 Scorcher and M5 Sandstorm MLRS platforms are used as mobile artillery systems.

NATO aircraft are mostly American and utilize geometric stealth radar-resistant technologies. NATO helicopters include the AH-99 Blackfoot light helicopter gunship (revival of the prototype RAH-66 Comanche), MH-9 Hummingbird and AH-9 Pawnee (both updated versions of the Littlebird family), the CH-67 Huron (modernized stealth variant of CH-47 Chinook) and the UH-80 Ghosthawk (stealth variant of the UH-60 Blackhawk). NATO fixed-wing assets include the A-164 Wipeout (updated stealth version of the A-10 Thunderbolt).

NATO Naval forces seen in the Altis Conflict consist of Speedboats, Assault Boats, and SDV (Swimmer Delivery Vehicle) submersibles. British UKSF are seen to operate from the HMS Proteus, an Astute-Class Submarine.

NATO forces operate the Stomper UGV as both an unarmed logistics platform and an armed combat vehicle, mounting a 12.7 mm HMG and a 40 mm GMG in a RCWS. NATO troops also employ the AR-2 Darter Mircro-UAV and the MQ-4A Greyhawk UCAV.

NATO special operations deployed to the Republic of Altis and Stratis theater consist of reconnaissance, aquatic, and sniper teams.

Sniper teams are usually fielded in groups of two, made up of a sniper and a spotter. Said personnel make use of Gillie Suits based off of standard MTP Combat Fatigues, Chest Rigs, and Balaclavas. Snipers are armed with camouflaged M320 LRR sniper rifles and suppressed P07s, while spotters field suppressed MX rifles and suppressed P07s. Snipers are equipped with Rangefinders, while Spotters carry Laser Designators. Scout-sniper operations usually consist of very slow, stealthy movement and can last days on end. Tasks include observing and relaying enemy movement, as well as engaging high value targets or providing fire support for friendly forces in the vicinity.

Recon teams are equipped with lighter gear than standard infantry. Booniehats, Beanies, and other light head-wear along with Chest Rigs without ballistic protection are the norm. Recon teams deploy with suppressed weaponry.

NATO divers are equipped with SDAR underwater rifles and suppressed P07 pistols. They use Rebreathers and wear black Wetsuits.

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Unfortunately, Congress Needs to Pass This Fourth Amendment …

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Our Constitutions Fourth Amendment reads as follows: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

As with nigh all the rest of our Constitution, the federal government has long been ignoring the Fourth. Likely the most notorious example is the National Security Administration (NSA)s bulk data collection. Which is the Feds: (S)toring the online metadata of millions of internet users for up to a year, regardless of whether or not they are persons of interest to the agency.

The NSA has been amassing so much data on persons notof interest that it built a $1.2 billion data center thats seven times larger than the Pentagon. (If youre questioning whether the Fourth Amendments papers protection applies to digital data imagine hitting Print.)

Let me guess what youre wondering now: How could the NSA possibly be issued this sort of mass, blanket warrant, under the auspices of the Fourth Amendment if millions of these persons are notof interest? I.e. totally devoid of any probable cause? A very reasonable question.

The NSA laid claim to the authority to do this under the auspices of the Patriot Act. Which is not how things are supposed to work. Congress cant pass laws that eviscerate Constitutional protections they must amend the Constitution to eviscerate said protection. So, of course, the poorly written Patriot Act is trumped (no pun intended) by the Constitution.

The Senate has long been ignoring another Constitutional charge to properly vet federal judges prior to confirmation. So our judiciary is addled throughout by men and women in black gowns who shouldnt be. Because they impose their personal policy preferences rather than rule within the confines of the Constitution.

Even under these conditions, we do occasionally get good legal decisions. In May 2015, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the NSAs build data collection is unconstitutional. In response, President Barack Obamas Attorney General Loretta Lynch said: she was unaware of privacy violations under its existing program.

Madame Attorney Generals blissful ignorance is emblematic of the Washington, D.C.-wide problem. (As, too, was her being confirmed AG by a yet-again-too-compliant Senate.)

And, of course, the Feds arent just massively overreaching on domestic data they are overreaching overseas as well.

Under the auspices of the now-woefully-outdated 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the Feds obtained a warrant against tech giant Microsoft. With which they tried to collect data stored on servers Microsoft has outside of the United States (in this instance, in Dublin, Ireland).

This would be horrendously bad precedent as tin horn dictators the world over could and would start looking to get at data contained within our borders. To allow the Feds to do this to Microsoft would be to allow one of the worst genies ever out of its bottle.

Thankfully, the very same Second Court of Appeals that dumped the NSAs bulk data collection agreed and unanimously told the Feds they couldnt have access to Microsofts overseas servers. (God bless them.)

The very same Attorney General Lynch still bathing in her blissful ignorance has filed to reopen the case. Which brings us to Congress Fourth Amendment reminder we mentioned at the outset. Which would stop Madame Attorney Generals abuse here and a whole lot of abuses elsewhere.

The (Senate) bill is called the International Communications Privacy Act (ICPA). It is, amongst other things, a DC unicorn it is bipartisan. And bi-cameral as members of the House have joined in its crafting.

And it will rein in an overreaching federal government that is forcing companies to violate the laws of other countries in which they operate to give the U.S. government data to which it really shouldnt have access.

Because the Fourth Amendment (and the rest of the Constitution) is limited to our territorial bounds. Else wed better start invading a whole lot of places in which all sorts of our Constitutional rights are being routinely violated in their jurisdictions.

Obviously, the Feds need a reminder of this fact. ICPA is that reminder. It is pathetic that you need a Congressional backstop to a Constitutional right but were dealing with DC here, so we are oft dealing in things pathetic.

I am on the record as being nigh always against lame duck Congressional action. I dont like officials We the People just said should no longer be voting on legislation voting on legislation. But ICPA is a perfectly reasonable exception that proves this rule.

You can almost certainly pass ICPA just with people who will again be here in the next Congress. And ICPA has been languishing for more than two years all the while (and going back years and years before) the Feds have been vastly exceeding their Constitutional bounds. And in the Microsoft case are looking to do so yet again.

So the overreaches must be ended. ICPA ends them. So lets pass ICPA.

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Unfortunately, Congress Needs to Pass This Fourth Amendment ...

Monero (cryptocurrency) – Wikipedia

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Monero

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Monero (XMR) is an open source cryptocurrency created in April 2014 that focuses on privacy, decentralisation and scalability. Unlike many cryptocurrencies that are derivatives of Bitcoin, Monero is based on the CryptoNote protocol and possesses significant algorithmic differences relating to blockchain obfuscation.[1] Monero has ongoing support from the community,[2] and its modular code architecture has been praised by Wladimir J. van der Laan, a Bitcoin Core maintainer.[3] Monero's market capitalization followed an upward trend in the year 2016, going from $3.7 million (3 December 2015) to more than $170 million (3 September 2016), partly due to adoption by major darknet market AlphaBay, before correcting to around $60 million two months later (3 November 2016).[4]

Monero was launched on 18 April 2014 originally under the name BitMonero, which is a compound of Bit (as in Bitcoin) and Monero (literally meaning coin in Esperanto). Five days later the community opted for the name to be shortened just to Monero. It was launched as the first fork of CryptoNote-based currency Bytecoin, however was released with two major differences. Firstly, the target block time was decreased from 120 to 60 seconds, and secondly, the emission speed was decelerated by 50% (later Monero reverted to 120 seconds block time while keeping the emission schedule by doubling the block reward per new block). In addition, the Monero developers found numerous incidents of poor quality code that was subsequently cleaned and re-constituted.[citation needed]

A few weeks after launch, an optimized GPU miner for CryptoNight proof-of-work function was developed.[5]

On 4 September 2014, Monero recovered from an unusual and novel attack executed against the cryptocurrency network.[6]

Monero is an open-source pure proof-of-work cryptocurrency. It runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD.[7]

Its main emission curve will issue about 18.4 Million coins to be mined in approximately 8 years.[8][9] (more precisely 18.132 Million coins by ca. end of May 2022[10][11]) After that, a constant "tail emission" of 0.6 XMR per 2-minutes block (modified from initially equivalent 0.3 XMR per 1-minute block) will create a sub-1% perpetual inflation (more precisely [see ref. above] starting with 0.87% yearly inflation around May 2022) to prevent the lack of incentives for miners once a currency is not mineable anymore.[12] The emission uses a smoothly decreasing reward with no block halving (any block generates a bit less monero than the previous one, formula: Emission per 2-minutes block = max(0.6,floor((MA)219)1012) XMR, with M=2641 and A=1012 times the amount of XMR already emitted). The smallest resolvable currency unit is 1012 XMR. The proof-of-work algorithm, CryptoNight, is AES-intensive and "memory heavy", which significantly reduces the advantage of GPU over CPU.

Monero daemon uses the original CryptoNote protocol except for the initial changes (as the block time and emission speed). The protocol itself is based on "one-time ring signatures"[13] and stealth addresses. Underlying cryptography is essentially Daniel J. Bernstein's library for Ed25519, which is Schnorr signatures on the Twisted Edwards curve. The end result is passive, decentralised mixing based on heavily-tested algorithms.[14]

However, several improvements were suggested by Monero Research Labs (a group of people, including core developers team), which covered the proper use of ring signatures for better privacy.[15] Specifically, the proposals included "a protocol-level network-wide minimum mix-in policy of n = 2 foreign outputs per ring signature", "a nonuniform transaction output selection method for ring generation" and "a torrent-style method of sending Monero output".[16] These changes, which were implemented in version 0.9.0 "Hydrogen Helix",[17] can help protect user's privacy in a CryptoNote-based currency according to the authors.

As a consequence, Monero features an opaque blockchain (with an explicit allowance system called the viewkey), in sharp contrast with transparent blockchain used by any other cryptocurrency not based on CryptoNote. Thus, Monero is said to be "private, optionally transparent". On top of very strong privacy by default, such a system permits net neutrality on the blockchain (miners cannot become censors, since they do not know where the transaction goes or what it contains) while still permitting auditing when desired (for instance, tax audit or public display of the finances of an NGO).[18] Furthermore, Monero is considered by many to offer truly fungible coins.[19][20][21]

Monero developers are also working on implementing a C++ I2P router straight in the code. This would complete the privacy chain by also hiding the IP addresses.[22]

"Monero is powered strictly by Proof of Work, but specifically, it employs a mining algorithm that has the potential to be efficiently tasked to billions of existing devices (any modern x86 CPU)."[23] Monero uses the CryptoNight Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm, which is designed for use in ordinary CPUs.[24]

The smart mining forthcoming feature will allow transparent CPU mining on the user's computer, far from the de facto centralization of mining farms and pool mining, pursuing Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision of a true P2P currency.[25]

Monero has no hardcoded limit, which means it doesn't have a 1 MB block size limitation preventing scalability. However, a block reward penalty mechanism is built into the protocol to avoid a too excessive block size increase: The new block's size NBS is compared to the median size M100 of the last 100 blocks. If NBS>M100, the block reward gets reduced in quadratic dependency of how much NBS exceeds M100. E.g. if NBS is [10%, 50%, 80%, 100%] greater than M100, the nominal block reward gets reduced by [1%, 25%, 64%, 100%]. Generally, blocks greater than 2*M100 are not allowed, and blocks <= 60kB are always free of any block reward penalties.

The Monero Core Team also released a standard called OpenAlias,[26] which permits much more human-readable addresses and "squares" the Zooko's triangle. OpenAlias can be used for any cryptocurrency and is already implemented in Monero, Bitcoin (in latest Electrum versions) and HyperStake.

XMR.TO allows to make payments to any Bitcoin address with the strong privacy provided by Monero.[27]

Since it is not based on Bitcoin, Monero cannot take advantage of the Bitcoin technological ecosystem, like GUI wallet or payment processors. As a consequence, everything has to be written from scratch.[28] Presently (as of March 2015), Monero doesn't have feature parity with Bitcoin. Notably, there is no support to multisignature and no Monero payment processor (but in April 2015 it was announced on bitcointalk.org one is in the works by a member of The Monero Core Team).

Monero transactions take up more space on the blockchain than Bitcoin transactions, and transactions will be even larger with RingCT added.[29] This makes it more expensive to run a full node.

Without RingCT implemented, it is still possible to deanonymize Monero transactions in some situations by analyzing the transaction amounts.[30]

CryptoKingdom is a MMORPG that uses Monero for entry into its economy.[37]

MoneroDice is a dice gambling game that uses cryptography for provably fair randomness.[38]

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Monero (cryptocurrency) - Wikipedia

Exchange Rates | CoinWarz – Cryptocurrency Mining vs. Bitcoin …

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Bitcoin

(365)

(42)

(ACOIN)

(ALF)

(ANC)

(ARI)

(ARK)

(ASC)

(AUR)

(BNCR)

(BTA)

(BCX)

(BQC)

(BVC)

(BEN)

(BET)

(BIG)

(BTB)

(BTC)

(BTG)

(BTM)

(BLC)

(CAP)

(BCN)

(CAI)

(CANN)

(CSC)

(CAT)

(CNC)

(CIN)

(CNOTE)

(CON)

(CYC)

(CTM)

(CMC)

(CRC)

(CRYPT)

(BUK)

(CBX)

(CGA)

(CURE)

(DASH)

(DVC)

(DMD)

(DGB)

(DGC)

(DGC)

(DGC)

(NOTE)

(DOGE)

(EAC)

(EMC2)

(DEM)

(EMD)

(ENC)

(ETH)

(ETC)

(EXE)

(EXC)

(FRQ)

(FST)

(FTC)

(FFC)

(FLAP)

(FLO)

(FLT)

(FRAC)

(FRK)

(FRC)

(FZ)

(GLX)

(GAME)

(GLC)

(GDN)

(GLD)

(GPUC)

(GDC)

(GRS)

(NLG)

(HAM)

(HIRO)

(HBN)

(ICN)

(IFC)

(IEC)

(IXC)

(JPC)

(XJO)

(KARM)

(MEOW)

(KDC)

(KGC)

(LEAF)

(LGD)

(LTC)

(LTCD)

(LGC)

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Exchange Rates | CoinWarz - Cryptocurrency Mining vs. Bitcoin ...

List of redheads – Wikipedia

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This is a list of notable people with natural red hair. Red or ginger hair may come in a variety of shades from strawberry blond to auburn.[1] With only 2% of the population having red hair,[2] it is the rarest natural hair colour.[1]

People who dyed their red hair into another colour or who went grey with age are included, but people with hair dyed red, such as Clara Bow, David Bowie, Lucille Ball, Rita Hayworth and Sophie Turner are not.

Figures from the Bible or classical mythology, such as Esau or Judas Iscariot, are included. Characters from modern fiction such as Anne of Green Gables or Ginger Hebblethwaite are not.

The term 'Redhead' is also popularized by Archies comics, USA where its main character teenager Archie Andrews with red hairs for his Scottish roots, is often addressed as 'redhead' or 'redheaded junk' by his arch rival Reggie who despite his handsome looks and deep pockets falls a notch below Archie on gaining the ultimate company and sympathies from the girls around.

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List of redheads - Wikipedia